[Genealib] 1-Step Improvement - 1920 Federal Census

[Joy Rich]

I'm distributing this 
information at the request of 
Joel Weintraub.

Joy

Joy Rich, MLS
Chapter Representative, New 
York Metro Chapter
Association of Professional 
Genealogists
http://www.apgen.org
http://www.apgen.org/chapters/newyork/index.html

========================================================

"I want to announce an 
expansion of the geographical 
search capabilities for
the US Census at the Morse 
1-Step website.

We presently have street 
indexes to Enumeration 
District (ED) numbers for
large cities for the 1910, 
1930, and even 1940 (opening 
2012) censuses, and
some location to ED 
information for the 1910 
census for smaller 
communities.
We also have incorporated the 
National Archives (NARA) 1930 
database where
all EDs are described (and 
searchable). Another tool we 
have are conversion
tables from 1940 EDs to 1930 
EDs (and more important, vice 
versa), 3,000
urban areas defined by their 
EDs in 1940 (and therefore 
1930), and tables
for the larger cities' 1930 ED 
numbers converted to 1920 
ones.

Until this week, the only 
online method for finding 
easily 1920 EDs from
location data was our 
conversion routines, but only 
for large urban areas.
However, our ability to 
convert 1930 to 1920 ED 
numbers has now been
augmented to include rural 
areas as well.  Originally, I 
and some volunteers
transcribed about 40,000 
1930/1920 ED pairs for the 
large and medium cities
(ending up with about 975 
areas), and just this month, I 
completed
transcribing the remaining 
80,000 or so correlates for 
the smaller urban
areas and rural communities 
(adding over 1,400 small urban 
area names to the
database for 1930/1920). 
Steve Morse now has integrated 
the new database
into the existing 1-Step 
utilities and expanded their 
capabilities.  He has
also combined some overlapping 
utilities on the 1-Step site 
in the census
area.   If you find errors in 
the data or problems with the 
search engines,
let Steve or me know.

So now one should be able to, 
online and for free,  find 
most ED numbers on
the 1920 census by 
geographical means, whether 
the target address is in a
city, town, or rural area. (We 
already have that capability 
for 1930 and
1940.)

To summarize: if you can't 
find a name on a name index 
for the 1920 census,
but know the location that 
your target was living at in 
1920, then it is now
possible to do one (or all) of 
the following on the 1-Step 
Website:  1. Find
your 1920 large city address 
on our 1930 ED finder, and 
convert the
resultant 1930 ED # to a 1920 
one;  2. Find your small 
community name on our
1930/1920 list of urban areas, 
and see the 1930 and 1920 ED 
numbers for that
area; 3. Take a 1930 ED number 
and find out what it 
correlates with in 1920
(and vice versa); 4. Use the 
NARA database through the 
1-Step site to find
your target location in 1930, 
and use the links there to the 
1920 (and 1940)
conversion utilities.

The 1930 to 1920 table source 
information (NARA T1224) was 
not as good as
the 1940 to 1930 material, so 
the coverage we have isn't 
100%.  Some areas
show ranges of EDs while 
others lacked information 
entirely or the NARA film
was illegible, but we think 
that most searches will be 
successful using the
new tables and expanded 
utility features. See the 
revised "Overview" essay
on the "US Census and Soundex 
(1790-1940)"  folder for more 
information at:
http://www.stevemorse.org/

Enjoy,

Joel Weintraub
Dana Point, CA" 
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