The 1930 United States Census

Recently I have been working on indexing the US Census from 1930. What a fascinating look into people's lives. I have worked on pages from a prison in Kentucky, a nursing school at a hospital in West Virginia, farms in Texas and Alabama, and am now working on some neighbourhoods in Providence, Rhode Island. It is a wonderful look back through history and how the world has changed in just a short time. There are children in the census who would now be in their 80's and 90's, so there is the potential for some of them to still be living. So all these changes have happened in their lifetime. At the nursing hospital there were several young women whose place of birth was British Honduras, what is now Belize. I have also seen birth places such as Palestine, Austro-Hungaria, and my favorite because of my own Irish roots, the Irish Free State. I love that they have listed this way and not as Ireland, showing their fervent patriotism for a free Ireland. I also love the Canadians who are listed as either Canada French or Canada English, to determine what part of Canada they came from and of course what language they spoke.

I often get lost imagining what these people's lives were like. I feel for the girl who at 19 was in prison in Kentucky, she had been married at 13 and was listed as a widow. Did she even have a chance at happiness or any opportunity to make decisions for herself. I wonder what became of her, I do hope her lot improved. Though as the Great Depression was knocking on their doors, I greatly fear it did not.

To anyone who would be interested in helping to index you can sign up at www.familysearch.org From there you can download the software and get started immediately. There are all kinds of projects, especially for those that can read a foreign language. There are projects from the US, England, Germany, Latin America, Norway, Russia and several others that escape my memory.