 Welcome to the National Archives and Records Administration's 2022 Genealogy Series. We are pleased to present this educational series of lectures on how to conduct family research using the 1950 Census. My name is Andrea Matney, and as the program's coordinator, please allow me to do a quick introduction and provide instructions on how to participate. These lectures will demonstrate how to use records from the 1950 Census and other federal resources for genealogical research. Our presenters include experts from the National Archives and Records Administration and the U.S. Census Bureau. Sessions are intended for beginners to experienced family historians. All are welcome. We invite you to join the conversation. Please participate with the presenters and other family historians during each session's premiere. You can ask questions via chat by first logging into YouTube. Keep your eye on the chat during the broadcast because the speaker will answer your questions there in the chat. Type your questions in at any time, but please keep your questions on today's topic. In addition, find live captioning, handouts, and the events evaluation form under the video box by clicking on Show More. Note on our schedule that all sessions are broadcast on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. Eastern. And yes, all of the recorded videos will remain available for viewing later and at any time. Mapping the 1950 Census, Census Enumeration District Maps at the National Archives. I'm pleased to welcome our presenter today, Randy Oswald. Ms. Oswald is a supervisory archivist in the Cartographic Branch at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. She started with the National Archives in 2015 as an archives technician and joined the Cartographic Branch in 2016. Randy holds a master's of arts degree in public history from West Virginia University and a bachelor's of arts degree in history and anthropology from Heidelberg University. Randy, I am so pleased that you're with us today. I am now turning the program over to you. Great, thank you, Andrea. As has been mentioned, our presentation today will focus on Census Enumeration District Maps, which are held by the National Archives. First, what exactly is a Census Enumeration District? Enumeration Districts, also called EDs, are defined as an area which could be covered by a single Census Enumerator, or Census Taker, in one Census period, or about two to four weeks depending on whether an area was more urban or rural. Beginning with the 1930s Census, EDs were identified by a two-part number with a prefix to designate the county or city and a suffix to designate the individual district number. Examples are shown on the slide. Boundaries of Enumeration Districts were defined by the Census Bureau staff using guidelines outlined in official publications like the booklet shown here. Enumeration District boundaries were defined by existing political boundaries like counties, cities, wards, districts, or precincts. Enumeration Districts stayed within this type of political boundary to make it easier to gather statistical data from the Census. Boundaries also followed natural or man-made physical features like waterways, roads, railroads, or large properties such as cemeteries, parks, or institutions like prisons. ED boundaries and ED numbers often changed from one Census period to another, so if you know the ED for your relatives in the 1940 or 1930 Census, it will not necessarily remain the same for the 1950 Census. This is because of shifting populations, especially after World War II, and changing political boundaries such as changes to city limits. We will next look at some examples of Enumeration Districts. Census Enumeration Districts varied in size depending on the population of an area. In densely populated areas like New York City, Enumeration Districts were often quite small, encompassing at times only a single apartment building or city block as seen on this map of Manhattan. On this map, the Enumeration Districts are shown in orange, 1466, for example, and blue-circled numbers represent Census tract numbers. Enumeration Districts in smaller towns like Denison, Ohio, or Central Falls, Rhode Island were larger, covering multiple cities, city blocks, or in some cases, large portions of the town. In the Denison, Ohio example, the EDs follow ward boundaries with wards written in green. In the Central Falls example, Enumeration District boundaries follow major roads and also follow ward boundaries, although there are multiple Enumeration Districts within each ward. Ward numbers and boundaries are shown in green. Rural areas with smaller and more spread out populations typically had larger Enumeration Districts. Enumerators were also allotted more time to complete the Census for these larger areas, four weeks instead of just two. Boundaries often followed existing political lines such as those for townships in the case of Brown County, South Dakota, or sometimes for districts or other political divisions. As was mentioned earlier, Census Enumeration Districts often did not remain the same from one Census period to another. Here is an example of maps from the 1940 and 1950 Census covering Bronxville, New York. In 1940, Bronxville had only six Enumeration Districts, 60-24 through 60-29, shown on the black and white map on the left. While in 1950, it had 12 Enumeration Districts, 60-34 through 60-46. Note that the Enumeration Districts between these two years are different as well. So why are EDs helpful to researchers? First, the Census was organized by Enumeration District number. Knowing the ED number for where a specific person lived can be fundamental to locating a person on the Census population schedule. Especially at first, the name indexes for the Census are often inaccurate due to bad handwriting or transcription or OCR errors along with other issues. Names might have also been misspelled by enumerators, making some individuals difficult to locate when searching by name only. Additionally, common names can lead to numerous search returns, especially in large cities, for example, searching for John Smith in Manhattan. Knowing the ED number can also allow researchers to look up who lived at a specific location without first needing to know the name. For example, if you want to see who lived in your house in 1950. How does someone go about locating the Enumeration District for a specific location? One way is to use Census Enumeration District maps. ED maps were maps created to visually show the boundaries of an Enumeration District. The maps were then used by enumerators on the ground during their work. The Census Bureau created these maps using base maps or maps that already existed. These included a variety of map types, such as soil survey maps, city, state, or county, government maps, Chamber of Commerce or other local maps, general highway maps, commercially produced maps, and many others. The base maps were annotated using colored pencils or crayons to show Enumeration District boundaries, numbers, and other relevant features, such as ward or precinct boundaries, township boundaries, and names, and things like city limits. The map on this slide illustrates Census Enumeration District boundaries for a town in Ohio. The ED numbers and boundaries are shown in orange, which is typical for the census, and other boundaries, in this case, ward boundaries, and the words fourth ward, which are shown in green, although the colors can sometimes vary. Here are a few examples of base maps used by the Census Bureau. The first example is for Sylvania, Georgia, and the base map used is a sanitary survey map. Our next example, a map of Rackport, Massachusetts, is a locally or commercially produced map, possibly made for tourists or visitors, which shows local points of interest, including beaches, churches, and parks. Many of the base maps used were general highway maps, similar to this map for Lewis County, West Virginia. These maps often do not include many details, showing only highways in the locations of cities or towns within a county. As was previously mentioned, enumeration district numbers are comprised of two parts, a prefix for the county or city, and a suffix for the district number, such as 32-30 for an enumeration district in Findlay, Ohio. Sometimes district numbers are also included in additional alphabetical suffix. Example, 57-130a, which happened when some districts were split. We'll talk more about this later. Typically, these alphabetical suffixes were not shown on the maps. Also important to note on city maps, the prefix may not be included for each enumeration district. This was done to save both space and time. The prefix will always be included on the first page of the map or as part of the map legend. Additionally, while smaller cities and towns shared the prefix of their home county, larger cities often received a distinct prefix that was different from the surrounding county. Make sure when doing research to record the entire number, including the prefix, as this information is necessary to cross-reference when trying to locate the enumeration district using other census records. Now for some examples of what we just discussed. Chicago is an example of a larger city with a distinct prefix, 103, and with a map that does not show the entire ED number. For example, in the center of the map, the EDs 4924, 4925, and 4927 are visible in orange to the right of the census tract number 36 in the blue circle. But the full ED number would be 103-4924, 103-4925, etc. The 103 prefix can be found near the map legend. The next map shows another location within Cook County, Illinois, the home of Chicago, and this town is called Maywood. Its prefix, clearly written for each district, illustrated on the map, is 16, not 103 like Chicago. This also demonstrates the difference of smaller locations having the whole number written out instead of just the suffix like districts found within much more densely populated areas like Chicago. So why else are census ED maps useful? Besides showing census information, enumeration district maps can also be useful to researchers for other reasons. The maps provide additional context when conducting research, helping to show what an area was like around the time the census was taken. The maps can show locations of houses, businesses, community buildings, points of interest, and the layout of local roads. They can also show landmarks, railroads, and other major features that may no longer exist in a location. Additionally, census ED maps may be the only maps for smaller communities held by the National Archives, so they can provide a great source for local maps from the early to mid 20th century, even when someone is not necessarily interested in the census information that these maps may contain. Here are some additional examples of maps and the types of information that they can show. This map of Kingsford, Michigan shows the prominent Ford manufacturing plant located within the town. Maps sometimes show landmarks including major businesses and manufacturers such as this one. This map also shows the rail lines that lead to that Ford plant. Sometimes with these enumeration district maps, you can get really lucky and a map will list the property or business owners in a particular community. This can be a great resource for genealogy showing who owns specific properties at the time the map was created, such as you can see on this map of Rockford, Ohio. While ED maps can be very helpful to researchers, there are some limitations to be aware of when using them. These maps were used by the Census Bureau, so they may have damage or wear. They may also have condition issues from tape, folds, tears, or other issues that can obscure information. You can see a fold line running down the center of this map of Washington County, Tennessee, possibly obscuring some information. Additionally, base maps may have been out of date. While the Census Bureau attempted to locate more recent maps, typically from the mid to late 1940s for the 1950 census, sometimes the maps that were used were from decades earlier. Maps may have also been planning maps, showing roads or features that were not actually constructed. Be sure to carefully read the source of the map to help determine if this may be the case. Some maps, especially general highway, base maps, or those of more rural areas, do not show individual streets and may provide less details about an area. Maps for cities and towns often provide more information and show more details. However, smaller cities may not have their own map if they had less than five enumeration districts. We will next take a look at some examples. One example of a very old map used by the 1950 census is this 1906 map of Eli, Iowa. It dates from nearly 50 years before the 1950 census. While the boundaries of the community may not have changed during that time, features, roads, and other aspects of the town may have changed. As has also been mentioned, county or other rural maps often lack details. Maps like this one of Monroe County, Michigan may only include township names and boundaries and the locations of towns or villages along with major roads. Most towns and cities within the county were too small to have their own maps. Another limitation to census enumeration district maps is that they do not typically show changes to enumeration districts. Sometimes, once enumerators or supervisors got on the ground to begin their work, they discovered that the planned enumeration districts were too large or contained more people than had been expected. As a result, enumeration districts were split into smaller districts to allow the work to be distributed among more enumerators. This is shown on census records through the addition of an alphabetical suffix, example 261-1A261-1B. This information is not typically shown on enumeration district maps, but is listed in district descriptions, which we will talk about a little later. Fort Worth presents a special case of the splitting of census enumeration district maps. For the 1950 census, the Census Bureau attempted to recruit teachers to serve as enumerators. In Fort Worth, there was very high teacher participation, which allowed for enumeration districts to be split into much smaller pieces and completed in shorter periods of time, given all of this extra help. Again, the maps for Fort Worth, Texas, do not show the smaller districts that were ultimately created. However, the district descriptions do show this, as can be seen by the A, B, and C, written below the enumeration district number on this census enumeration district description. We will now look at how to locate and access census enumeration district maps. ED maps are held by the cartographic branch of the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. The 1940 and 1950 maps are easily accessible through the National Archives catalog. You can search the NAID identifier shown on this slide to locate the series, and use the search within this series blue button indicated by the blue arrow on the slide to narrow results to a specific year and or location. As an example, after clicking search within the series, in the search bar at the top, we've entered 1950 Hancock County, Ohio as our search term and discovered two maps for this location, a city map and accounting map. Click the blue hyperlinks to view these maps. Once you've clicked on the hyperlink, you're taken to the item description for each map. This is the city map for Findlay. The item description lists the year, state, county name, city or town name if there is one, and the enumeration district range in the title. You can zoom in on the map, download using the blue button with the arrow pointing down, or scroll through additional maps if a particular location has more than one sheet. Maps from earlier than 1940 have not been systematically digitized. A few are available in the catalog from 1900 to 1930, but the majority of these maps are not. These maps can be requested and viewed in person in our cartographic research room at College Park. Visit the National Archives website and specifically the Cartographic Branch website for the most up-to-date information about operating hours and status. Before 1950, not all census areas or counties had a map available. The preliminary inventory PI 103, Cartographic Records of the Bureau of the Census, lists coverage for each county by year. And just as a note, very few maps exist prior to 1900. There are just a couple of maps that exist for the 1880 census, and I do not believe we have any for the 1890 census. Additionally, it's important to note that not every map created for the 1950 census has been digitized. Maps showing all census enumeration districts appear in the catalog, but sometimes additional maps for smaller towns were created. Because the information shown on these maps can be obtained from other broader maps, the very specific maps were not scanned. However, they are available to view in person should you wish to see them. For example, for Bronx County, New York, there are seven maps available in the catalog which show all census enumeration districts. But there are an additional 185 maps that are available to view in person, which go into much greater detail. As was mentioned with the case of split enumeration districts, in addition to maps, the Census Bureau also produced written enumeration district descriptions using words to describe the boundaries. District descriptions are also held by the cartographic branch, and for the 1950 census, they will be added to the National Archives catalog soon. The 1940 and some 1930 descriptions are already available in the catalog. This example is from the 1940 census. District descriptions are also available on microfilm at the National Archives. On April 1st, the 1950 census website will officially launch. The website will include search options to locate and view both census enumeration district maps and descriptions without having to go to the National Archives catalog. On March 30th, Michael Knight will be presenting about this website and showing some of the features. Additional information and search tips to help locate enumeration district maps and descriptions are also available through archives.gov. This concludes my presentation about census enumeration district maps. Thank you all for attending and please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for joining us for today's presentation. We are wrapping up the lecture portion of the broadcast, but we'll continue to take your questions about today's topic in the chat section. Please take a minute to complete our short evaluation form so we can plan future programs based on your feedback. Find the link to it under Show More. If we did not get to your question today, please send us an email. Note that the presentation's video recording and handout will remain available on this YouTube page and our website. If you enjoyed this video, check out our Know Your Records program. We have many more educational videos on how to do research with us. Thank you to the genealogy series team who contributed to the success of this program. We are grateful for your work. Again, please stay if you have questions, although we are concluding the video portion of the broadcast. We will continue to take your questions in chat for another 10 minutes.