census – jen's ancestors

Well, another 10 years has passed. What does that mean? The 1950 census has been released. That is about the only interesting thing that has happened in my research this year.

But, I have a problem. My mother and her family are not in the census! I tried and tried, and even though Ancestry has completely indexed the records, officially, they are still not to be found.

I was not terribly surprised by this, only because I have a ships passenger list of people arriving in the port of New York from Puerto Rico on April 1, 1950. On it were my mother, her brothers and her mother. Grandfather had come back to the mainland earlier.

As you can see here the ship arrived in port on April 1.

The census started in April. I think that the Shepard clan was in the midst of settling down when the census was going on and they were missed. I found Dick and Dad, and my father’s family, also. But not mom. I will check one more time when the FamilySearch site is done with their indexing (they still haven’t finished Ohio and California, my two options for the Shepards.)

The above census is dad and his family in Wausau, WI. Clarence was one of the folks who got a few extra questions too.

I have found pretty much everyone else of interest at this time in the 1950 census. Maybe I’ll get lucky and Bill and Lois are mis-indexed, but I have a feeling that this is the one census they missed.

Hurray! Miracle of miracles, I have finally found the elusive Fred Hamm in the 1940 census, something I thought was impossible. And, I wasn’t really even looking for him, I was looking for his son Arthur Albert Hamm.

census_hammfred_1940MN — 1940 United State Federal Census, Candor, Ottertail County, Minnesota. Almost to Fargo.

Interesting bits of information can be gleaned from this census. One of the questions asked was where was the person living in 1935. According to Fred, he was in Becker County, Minnesota around the Detroit Lakes area. Arthur and Raymond are living with their father in this census, and in 1935 they had been in Shawano County, most likely with their mother Emma, (who died in 1943).

We know that sometime later in 1940 or early 1941 Fred moved to Door County, Wisconsin where he was working as a Cherry picker ,and possibly farming, until he died in 1951.1 Raymond and Arthur probably moved with him to Door County. It wasn’t long after that both boys joined up – WWII had gotten into full swing.