from my morning newspaper Starting Monday, the National Archives are making the 1940 census available, for the first time, at the following site; 1940census.archives.gov Searches are free and you'll be able to download what you find. There is, however, a catch - the census has not been indexed by name - instead you have to look up the names of interest by where they lived, using their 'enumeration district.' These districts range from a few city blocks to entire towns, depending on the population size. Thus. to start; 1...you'll need to know the address or approximate address of where the person lived by April 1, 1940. 2) Using the address you can then identify the enumeration district, a 2 part number separated by a hyphen (the following website can be used to compute the enumeration district http://bit.ly/Hwtb2G or you can go to the US Natl. Archives site http://1.usa.gov/HBKt7 and follow the instructions there...(I have tried this last URL and it isn't working....but, perhaps it will on Monday......) 3) once you have the enumeration district, you are ready to browse the census records.

I got in thru Stevemorse.org and it worked brilliantly! Eliz On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 10:27 AM, Sandra Ferguson <ferg@ntelos.net> wrote: >  from my morning newspaper > >  Starting Monday, the National Archives are making the 1940 census > available, for the first time, at the following site; > 1940census.archives.gov    Searches are free and you'll be able to download > what you find.  There is, however, a catch - the census has not been indexed > by name - instead you have to look up the names of interest by where they > lived, using their 'enumeration district.'  These districts range from a few > city blocks to entire towns, depending on the population size.  Thus. to > start; > 1...you'll need to know the address or approximate address of where the > person lived by April 1, 1940. > 2)  Using the address you can then identify the enumeration district, a 2 > part number separated by a hyphen (the following website can be used to > compute the enumeration district     http://bit.ly/Hwtb2G    or you can go > to the US Natl. Archives site  http://1.usa.gov/HBKt7     and follow the > instructions there...(I have tried this last URL and it isn't > working....but, perhaps it will on Monday......) > 3)  once you have the enumeration district, you are ready to browse the > census records. > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to PA-OLD-CHESTER-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message