1950 Kansas Census

Are you eagerly awaiting the release of the 1950 census? If you follow Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings blog, then you may have seen his challenge to identify members of our ancestral families that will be in the 1950 United States census.

Although it will be interesting to see the household configurations in the 1950 census, there is census data available for that time period -- IF the person lived in Kansas. Yes, that's correct, one can find census data for Kansas thru 1961. This information can be found in Ancestry's collection: Kansas, City and County Census Records, 1919-1961.

Since all of my ancestral lines were in Kansas prior to 1919, this collection has proven to be very helpful.

For example, my great-grandmother, Josie Crawford was living in Dodge City in 1950. Thus, I did a search of the collection for a Josie Crawford living in Ford County, Kansas.

Reporting Census Extraction Issue

Do you just rely on Ancestry's record information for census records prior to 1850? Or do you locate an extraction form for the census year to verify the interpretation of the check marks?

I have to admit that I often just use the information provided by Ancestry. I'm not sure why I decided to locate an extraction form and record the census information for myself today. However, I'm glad I did since I think the Ancestry record had one piece of information incorrect.

I was researching Isaac Crawford of Jefferson County, Indiana. I suspected he was living in Jefferson County in 1820 but hadn't obtained a census record to support that suspicion. So, I searched Ancestry and was able to locate a record for Isaac Crawford in Jefferson County, Indiana.

Excel Census Worksheet

Michele Simmons Lewis' post, My Latest Excel Spreadsheet, explained what should be a fairly easy spreadsheet to visualize which census data is needed for individuals in the tree.

In order to quickly create this spreadsheet, I had to review some skills I've yet to master in RootsMagic, one of those being the creation of a named group.

Once I had a named group created for my ancestors, I was able to create a custom report to pull the following fields: Surname, Given Name, Birth Date, Death Date. By saving the report as a text file, I could then open it in Excel.

In the comments section of Michele's blog post, JJT (John J Tierney)stated that he had created a similar spreadsheet that would automatically calculate the age of the person for each census year. His post, Simple Census Age Table, discusses this spreadsheet, which he freely shares.

So, I downloaded the spreadsheet. (Thanks JJT!) After manipulating my data to pull the year out of the birth and death dates, I copied/pasted my data into the census age table. I'm probably going to shade my table to indicate whether I have found the census data.

Thank you Michele and JJT for sharing your expertise and providing the incentive to analyze my data in this way!