1940 Census is Released!

It has been a very eventful day for the genealogy enthusiasts. The 1940 Census records have been released after a 72 year waiting period and everyone is ready to dig right in and find their parents and grandparents, just like I am. I'm waiting for the Arizona images to be uploaded to Ancestry or 1940census.archives.gov so that I can wade through them. Some of the other states are already up and searchable by enumeration district or city/state. California is one that many are interested in as it was a destination state due to the poverty and depressed state of the economy and the Dust Bowl. My grandma and grandpa eventually moved here to Arizona for that very reason -- opportunity. I am just not sure where my Dad and his parents were living in 1940. Were they in Mesa? Was Grandpa working at Parker Dam as part of the CCC? And my other grandparents... They were not married yet, but both were in Arizona. Grandpa will be easier to find than Grandma, but I'll get there, eventually.

I did go and upload a batch to index this morning - they were WWI Draft Cards, not the census. I wish I could read Italian better because there were some Italian records waiting to be indexed and I just couldn't commit to it. It's hard enough to read the English records sometimes!

I have been actively working on my Carver genealogy as well as my husband's genealogy lines of Jarosz and Krolikowski. I love the puzzle of researching genealogy so having some untouched lines is fun for me. I did discover that one of the ancestors was in prison or jail in 1910, but I don't have a clue why or for how long. So many questions...

I will keep working on the census and trying to find my people. It will be a long process going name by name!

- Dece