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We undertook the arduous task of deciphering the handwritten pages of the 1940 Census to create a searchable index for the census. This was accomplished gradually, state by state, as we covered more and more of the census.
As required by the US Constitution, the census is a federal mandate to count every resident of the United States of America every 10 years. Census data is released to the public 72 years after it was taken.
Federal census takers were asked to record information about every person who was in each household on the census day. A census taker might have visited a house on a later date, but the information he collected was supposed to be about the people who were in the house on the census day. The basic census enumeration unit was the county. Each county was divided into enumeration districts, one for each enumerator. The completed forms were sent to the Commerce Department's Census Office in Washington, D.C.
Federal censuses are usually reliable, depending on the knowledge of the informant and the care of the census enumerator. Information may have been given to a census taker by any member of the family or by a neighbor. Some information may have been incorrect or deliberately falsified. |
