1940 US Census is completely searchable

Indexing of all US states on the 1940 census has been completed at Ancestry.com. Now we can search by name, even in Texas!

All that is required in order to view and download 1940 census images is a free Ancestry.com account, so no need to utilize that 14-day free trial just yet (if you haven't already).

Most states in the 1940 US Federal Census are also searchable and available for download free at FamilySearch. All of the names have been indexed, but a handful of states, including Texas (where all of my relatives were), won't be searchable for a few more weeks.

I managed to find about half of my 1940 ancestors by browsing the enumeration districts where I thought they would be living, but many were hard to track down. I now have a complete collection of all of my husband's and my own direct lines from the 1940 census schedule. Yay!

Tips

Like with previous indexed census images, the 1940 index does have errors due to illegible handwriting, fallible informants, and surely a few typos here and there. Also, spelling variations in first and last names may be an issue, though Ancestry.com does try to account for this situation.

If you are having no luck finding a particular ancestor, be sure to try searching instead for another relative who would have been living in the household. You can also just search for the surname within a specific area in order to uncover other relatives in the same area with a single search.

Also be sure to browse up and down census pages for relatives living nearby. I wasn't looking for my great-great grandmother yet, but stumbled across her living a few doors down from my great-grandmother's family.

Happy hunting!

Texas Deaths, 1977 - 1986

The wonderful volunteers at FamilySearch are in the process of indexing the Texas death certificates from between 1977 and 1986. Some of the images are already searchable, but if you can't find what you are looking for, you can also browse the images.

What? Browse over 1 million images?! Of course not, that would take ages. Fortunately, they have been divided into groups and subgroups.

First, the death certificates are divided by year. Next they are sub-divided into month and county, or range of counties alphabetically. From there, they may or may not be in any particular order.

So, to browse for my great grandmother's death certificate, I will choose 1980, then find the March certificates for McLennan County. March for McLennan County is divided between Volume 40 (Kendall - McLennan) and Volume 41 (McLennan - Nueces), so from there I have to decide if I want to start with Volume 40 and search for where the McLennan County certificates begin, or run through the images of this county in Volume 41 first, since McLennan will be the first county in that group.

I'm going to go with the latter first, and if I don't find it there, I'll go back to Volume 40. Happy hunting!

Tombstone Tuesday: Find A Grave

For those that haven't stumbled upon this tremendous resource, Find A Grave contains (at present) 82 million grave records, many of which are accompanied by tombstone photos. This is an excellent site for beginner genealogist to find important data and leads, as well as wonderful photos for your family history archive.

Find A Grave can be searched by name, birth date, death date and cemetery location. You can also look up a specific cemetery and search it all of the surnames you have associated with that location; a great way to discover information about aunts, uncles, cousins and extended family.

Some entries contain very little information at Find A Grave, but there are some that contain a great deal of historical data, such as my ancestor Isaac Low's Find A Grave page.

The images and data are submitted by volunteers, and if you know the cemetery where your ancestor is buried, you can submit a photo request. If you live near a cemetery, you can find requests for photos and pitch in to help others.

FindAGrave.com is a free service, supported by ads and sponsored pages (to remove ads). To place or fulfill photo requests, a free member account is required.

If you have found something awesome and unexpected at Find A Grave, feel free share your find in the comments below. We love to hear about genealogy success stories.

Free Genealogy and Family History Forms at Genedocs

If you are looking for ready-made forms or templates to help organize or enrich your family history research, check out Genedocs Innovative Forms Library for a massive collection of free forms to accommodate just about every need.

The 30 available forms at Genedocs cover a variety of genealogical subjects, including an ancestor outline list, research logs, military service summary, biography templates, timelines, and comparison tools for tracking family traits and naming patterns. You will also find planning forms to help prepare for inevitable life changing events.

Note: If you don't have Microsoft Office, I've had no trouble importing the forms I've downloaded so far into OpenOffice.

Also be sure to check out the Genedocs Blog.

I, for one, will be spending this weekend transcribing census data into Census Summary Sheets.