1940 Census!!

If you do genealogy you may be aware that every US Census is kept private for 72 years. Yesterday, April 2, the 1940 census reached its 72nd birthday and is now available free to the public. Well, sort of.

The US census bureau is releasing free digital images of the millions of pages of records. If I knew the city where a John Doe lived in 1940 I could wade through hundreds or thousands of pages looking for the record. Or I could wait for the records to be transcribed and made searchable.

Volunteers are needed to read the records, decipher the handwritnig, and type the names, ages, etc into forms which will be permanently stored and searchable. One site where anyone can volunteer is FamilySearch.org.