Finding Family in the 1940 Census

It is only 37 days until the release of the images from the 1940 Census. This census will mark the second appearance of my parents in census records. Both were under five years of age in the 1930 census, so by 1940 they were in their early teen years, just starting high school.

Patricia Landon Kelly
circa 1940

Clara Laymon Pecht, Shirley Jean Petersen
Kenneth Leroy Petersen
circa 1940

While I can't tie down these images specifically to 1940, they are certainly within about a year of when the census was taken.

I will be looking for my Mom in the census for Greenwood, Cass county, Nebraska and Dad will be in Lincoln, Lancaster, Nebraska.

Since the 1940 census images will not be indexed on the day they are released to the public, the first step in planning to find images is to determine the potential enumeration districts where your family members lived.

The search for this information begins at The National Archives. On the search page, I typed in "1940 census greenwood nebraska" (without quotes). The results gave me the following information:

NE ED 13-23: SALT CREEK ELECTION PRECINCT, GREENWOOD VILLAGE.

NE ED 13-24: SALT CREEK ELECTION PRECINCT OUTSIDE GREENWOOD VILLAGE.

I've now narrowed down the images where I need to look for Mom's family in the 1940 census. As I learn more about the process and locating my kin, I'll share it here on LongLostRelatives.net. I've also started "Spring Training" for indexing census records by indexing several batches of World War II draft registration documents. I'll write more about that in another blog post.

Thanks to Randy Seaver of the Genea-Musings blog - I followed his instructions for locating this information.