1940 Census

The 1940 U.S. Census was just made available to the public at the beginning of this month.  Unfortunately, it's not yet fully indexed.  That means you have to know which town your ancestors lived in and just go page by page until, hopefully, you stumble across them.  So after several hours of searching, I think I've managed to track down all our Dunn relatives who were alive at that time.  I have saved copies of the original census forms if anyone is interested.  You can also get on Ancestry.com for free through April 10th to look them up for yourself.  This census lists the property value of the head of household, occupations and employment statistics, and the town they were living in 5 years prior, among other things.

On the Dunn side, Samuel Crandell Dunn, Sr. is living in Three Creek, Owyhee, Idaho in the household of his son, Wilford and Wilford's wife, Eva.  He is widowed by this time, and is 86 years old.  No occupation is listed for him, so he must be retired by this point.  One interesting thing this census asked for was the person's level of education, or highest grade completed.  In his case, he appears to have completed through the 4th grade.  I'm not sure what kind of education was available in North Ogden, where he lived until about 12 years of age.  Considering he and his family spent most of their lives farming in sparsely settled areas, there would not have been many opportunities for formal schooling.  He and his family were true pioneers.  On the same page of the census can also be found his youngest son, Alvaro, and his wife and children.  No address is given, so I assume they live where there are no real street names or house numbers. 

I had a harder time finding Samuel Crandell, Jr.  Finally, I realized that one of his daughters, Hazel, had gotten married in Acequia, Minidoka, Idaho in Nov. 1939, so I thought it would be worth a shot to search there when other more obvious options came up with nothing.  Sure enough, on page 26, I ran across the family.  The information was provided to the census-taker by Lettie.  Samuel and Lettie, ages 54 and 46, are there with their sons Crandell and Lynn, ages 24 and 8.  Also living with them are their daughter Vesta, her husband, their son.  No address is given for them either.

Edwin and Agnes Marshall and their sons (except Leonard) were living in Overton, Clark, Nevada.  Leonard and Geneva are in Logandale with their children Sharon and Roger.  The information given was provided by Geneva.  Anyway, it's kind of neat to find people in the census.  Most of it is probably stuff you already know.  I think every one of them is a farmer, and so they tended to stay in one place more than we do now.  (Fortunately, they were small places, or I probably would have given up until the index came out!) 

It makes you wonder what people might deduce about us from the information we fill out on the census.  I have to say - I enjoy living in the information age (most of the time).  It's nice to have the information so accessible.