Thursday, March 29, 2012

Who will you find?

As those of you who work on your genealogy on a regular basis know, the 1940 census will be released in a matter of days. For some of us, it will be the only census to be released during our lifetime and that's just how the government planned it. But we in the United States can be thankful it is only every 72 years, not 100 years as in other places. Who am I hoping to find? I know I'll find my parents. The 1940 census is the first census in which my parents will appear, as well as some of their siblings. Since I was born shortly after the 1960 census, anyone who will be looking for me in a census won't see me until the 1970 census appears in 2042. Right now, that seems like a long time away and who knows if I'll be around to see it. To help out future generations, I made a copy of a blank 2010 census that I plan to file away in my research. My goal is to do that every time a census questionnaire comes out. This way future generations will have an idea of what questions will be asked and can see the changes from one census to the next.

So the question I pose to you is: who will you find?