Census secrets rule lifted for '30 count Personal records opened by U.S. Associated Press WASHINGTON June Hall moved her finger down the page, found her grandmother's name and smiled. After a half-hour of scrolling through microfilm of personal records from the 1930 census, Hall had hit pay dirt: the line that showed her grandmother's house, the home where Hall was born. Hall joined dozens of people Monday at the National Archives looking to fill in the blanks of their family histories as privacy protection for individual 1930 census records expired. The expiration, 72 years after each census, allows people to see information beyond the dry statistics typically available after the once-a-decade count. "It's a real high. You get into this and you just get hooked," said Hall, of Baltimore. While Hall was not yet born in 1930, she read that her grandmother lived on what was then a dirt road, while her father worked as a salesman and lived at home. Historians billed it as the largest release of such personal records by the federal government, providing a gold mine of genealogical data for family researchers. "We get a picture more revealing than any previous census," John Carlin, archivist of the United States, said before cutting the ribbon to the census research room. "The census is still the most complete record we have in our country at any single point in time," he said. Original 1930 forms have been destroyed, but not before copies were put on 2,667 rolls of microfilm in the 1940s. Those copies were made available at archives headquarters in Washington, and at 13 other offices around the country. The regional facilities are in Anchorage, Alaska; Laguna Niguel and San Bruno, Calif.; Denver; East Point, Ga.; Chicago; Waltham and Pittsfield, Mass.; Kansas City, Mo.; New York City; Philadelphia; Fort Worth; and Seattle. The National Archives' 1930 census site is at http://1930census.ar-chives.gov/. The Census Bureau is at www.census.gov/. Historians said the records would provide a more detailed look at life in America at the dawn of the Depression. The 1930 census date of April 1 came more than five months after the October 1929 stock market crash. "I'm trying to learn more about my father's house and any other things I didn't know about him," said Hunter Alexander, who was scouring records for Baltimore County. All Americans answered the same 32 questions. Some typified the times, such as "Does this household have a radio set?" No forms were mailed. Census-takers visited homes and recorded answers on an answer grid that looked like a giant report card. "I'm trying to finish a family tree," Reggie Green, of Washington, said as he scrolled through Orangeburg County in South Carolina. "This might help fill in some of the branches." http://1930census.archives.gov/ http://www.census.gov/