Traveling Back to 1940 (the Census)

If you're into genealogy, as I am, there's a once-every-ten-years event, when the U.S. Census Bureau releases the detailed information on the census taken 72 years before, which had been until now protected by privacy laws.  (I guess I shouldn't complain; the UK Census is kept confidential for 100 years and their 1911 Census was just released last year.)  This month, to not inconsiderable fanfare, the 1940 Census was made public.

Our census is like a strobe light which flashes every ten years, brightly illuminating on April 1 and then going dark.  Events which occur in between get missed.  For example, anyone looking in future years for me (they'll have to wait for another 20 years to see the first one in 1960), would find me as a 4-year-old in Dayton, Ohio, a 14-year-old in Houston, Texas, a married 24-year-old in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a married (to someone else and with children) 34-year-old in San Antonio, Texas, a 44-year-old in Perry, Georgia, and a married (but now without children at home) 54-year-old in Perry.  A lot of data, but it completely misses my living in Cocoa Beach, Florida, Springfield, Illinois, and Montgomery, Alabama!

My parents and my in-laws were children in 1940, ranging in ages from 10 to 19, so I knew they would have been counted.  The census were taken differently in 1940 than in 2010.  Temporary Government employees, called enumerators, went door-to-door in April 1940 and recorded their information on forms.  Those forms are now available.  However, they aren't indexed by name yet (that will take a while), so you have to have a pretty good idea where the family you're looking for lived.

My father's family lived at 1033 West Washington Street in Springfield, Illinois in April, 1940.  I know that house, because me grandparents still lived there in the 1970s, when we moved to Springfield.

The enumerator visited the house on April 9, 1940, and spoke to my grandmother, Rosamond Davison, who was then 45.  My grandfather Ralph F. Davison was also 45.  He was an office worker for the Illinois Bell Telephone Company and made $2,940 in 1939.  My father, Ralph S. Davison was then 19. He was listed as a "new worker" but, no one knew he would be going off to war within a couple of years to become a B-17 navigator flying out of England.  He would make the military his first career, retiring in 1967.  I suspect if the enumerator had asked him about the military, that would have not featured highly in his plans!  My dad's two younger sisters, Delores (age 16) and Ellen (age 14) also lived in the house.  All of them were born in Illinois, except for my grandmother, who was born in Missouri.  They had moved to Springfield from Danville, Illinois since 1935.  Apparently all had completed 4 years of high school, except my grandfather who had 8 years of school and my aunt Ellen, who had so far only finished two years of high school.  I still wonder about that figure for my grandfather. I knew all that (except for the schooling), but it's kind of a melancholy thing to realize that they're all gone now, my dad being the last to die in 2008, just short of his 87th birthday.

My mother's family lived at 316 Dexter Avenue in Mobile, Alabama, in 1940.  I knew Dexter Avenue as my grandmother continued to live there into the 1970s, but at 307, where they moved within a year or so after the census.  I found out about a year or so ago through online city directories about 316 Dexter, which was not the house I remembered and was not the house they lived in in 1930.

The enumerator visted their house on April 9, and spoke to my other grandmother, Erminia McCormick who was then 45 as well.  (I find it curious that all four of my grandparents were the same age!)  She was a teacher in the Mobile Public Schools.  By 1961, she had retired and then started a private school, probably for first and second graders in a large back room of her house.  I got to make good use of it during several extended summer stays in the 1960s.  Happy memories!  My grandfather and namesake, Paul S. McCormick, was an electrical engineer with the "power company" (Alabama Power?). He made $2900 in 1939 and she made $916.  My mother, Aimee McCormick, was only 10 at the time.  The surprise was to find that her family lived in Huntsville, Alabama in 1935!  That brought back a very old memory of my mother telling me when I was quite young of living for a little while in Huntsville.  I had quite forgotten it.  My grandfather had finished college (Auburn!), my grandmother had finished high school and my mother third grade.  They're all gone as well.  I never knew my grandfather as he died in 1956 when I was 7 months old, but my mother and grandmother died within a few months of each other in 1985.  All three are buried in Mobile.

My father-in-law's family was a little more of a challenge.  I knew the house they lived in; my mother-in-law still does, but a map of 1940 Northport, Alabama, bears only a superficial resemblance to the Northport I've visited.  I was able to find the district and got lucky, finding the family on page 1 of 51!

As you might guess with their being on page 1, they were visited early on April 2.  One surprise for me was that the street they lived on was then called Bridge Street!  (It's not been called that since at least the late '70s when I met them and I have no idea which bridge it refers to.)  He spoke to my wife's grandfather, E. Edward Mayfield, age 55.  He was a carpenter but had been out of work for 20 weeks.  He made $1200 in 1939.  Her grandmother "Metta" (actually Matta, misspellings are an occupational hazard with the census) was 47.  He had finished 7 years of school and she 6 years.  There were four children in the home (one daughter apparently had already married and moved out.  My future father-in-law Hugh was 16 and had finished one year of high school and worked as a newsboy for the city paper (the Tuscaloosa News?).  He had two older brothers, Walter (age 25) and Edward (age 23).  Walter had finished high school and was a clerk for a household appliance company. He had worked 48 hours the week before and made $1100 the year before.  Edward finished 8 years of school and had been a mechanic for an auto garage, but had been out of work for 16 weeks.  Again, they're all gone; my father-in-law died of cancer in 2000.

My mother-in-law's family had been the hardest one to find.  Fortunately, she's still alive (not just for this reason.  I knew that in 1940, she lived in El Dorado, Arkansas, but I didn't know where.  She told me the street address--715 West Block Street--but I had no idea where that was.  Google Maps to the rescue!  Fortunately the street is still there, no sure thing across 70 years and I found the batch of forms to leaf through.

They were visited on April 15 (or it least it looks like it).  In a bizarre coincidence, the enumerator's name was Mrs. Ruby Mayfield, no relation as far as we know, but the same last name as my mother-in-law's future husband a bit more than ten years in the future!  Mrs. Mayfield talked to my wife's grandmother, Georgia Belle De Priest, age 36.  Unusually for 1940, she was a single mother, having divorced her husband John De Priest.  (He would die of a heart attack in a bus station in 1944 in Lufkin, Texas.)  She was a florist in a retail flower shop and had finished high school.  Her two children, John H. De Priest (age 13) and "E. Jean" (actually Gene) (age 10) (my future mother-in-law), lived with her as did her mother, 74-yearl old Cora [Cotton] Smith.  When I described what I found to my mother-in-law, she remembered the next-door neighbors, who show up in the lines just above her family.

Getting back in my time machine and coming forward by 72 years, I am struck by several points:

1.  In just a few years my father and father-in-law would be off to war.  Fortunately and obviously both survived, but both maintained a lifelong connection with the military.  But many young men counted in that spring of 1940 didn't come home and start families of their own.

2.  America wasn't fully out of the Great Depression in 1940 and many were still out of work as in my father-in-law's family.  We forget that the Depression wouldn't really end until the mother of all stimulus packages, World War II, came and revved up the economy to full employment.

3.  Education levels were far lower on average than what we would consider acceptable.  Someone going to college then was a true achievement.

I can't help but wonder what the 1950 census will show in 10 years.  My mother was about to finish college in 1950 at Auburn and my father was at Georgia Tech, about to graduate.  He still had his English wife, Jane, at that point, but they would divorce at some point before he met my mother in May 1954 in Mobile.