1930 census on microfilm at Roanoke County library
by ELAINE POWERS

Next to vital records, census records are a goldmine of information for family history researchers. They show where a person was at a particular point in time. Sometimes relationships can be established by information revealed in the records.

Beginning in 1790 and every 10 years since, population information has been collected by the U.S. Government as required by law. The first census contained little more than the names of heads of households for a population of about 3,929 residents. By comparison, the 1930 census covers more than 137 million people and contains 32 questions ranging from the name of each person in the household to which families owned a radio set.

The 1930 census was released April 1, 2002, and is the latest census to which we have access. The 1940 census will not be available until 2012. The records are held by the National Archives and Records Administration for 72 years to protect the privacy of persons canvassed in the census.

Enumerators collected the following: name, address, relationship to head of household, whether home was owned or rented, value of home/rent paid, radio set in home, whether a farm, sex, race, age, marital status, age at first marriage, school attendance, literacy, birthplace of person and parents, language spoken, year of immigration, whether naturalized, ability to speak English, occupation, industry and class of worker, whether person worked previous day and if a veteran, the specific war fought in.

How to use census results

Beginning with the 1880 census you must use an index called the Soundex to find people in the records. The Soundex is an index based on names that sound alike. Because of World War II, the indexing on the 1930 census was interrupted, resulting in the Soundex being available only for the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky (only Bell, Floyd, Harlan, Kenton, Muhlenberg, Perry and Pike counties), Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia (only Fayette, Harrison, Kanawha, Logan, McDowell, Mercer and Raleigh counties).

For states without a Soundex, you can still search for your ancestors, but you MUST have a 1930 address. Once you have an address there are several finding aids you can use to help determine the enumeration district you will need in order to locate your ancestors.

The National Archives website gives information on how to use the 1930 census and contains descriptions of all the approximate 120,000 enumeration districts in the census: http://1930census.archives.gov/begin Search.asp.

You can search by state, county, township, institution and place names. The site lists only boundary streets for an ED (enumeration district). Check nearby streets if your street is not found.

Sources that may contain an address include: city directories, marriage licenses, birth, death and divorce records, naturalization records, death notices, cemetery records, church records, tax records, voter registration records, social security records, phone books and wills.

Another useful site is: http://steve morse.org/census/index.html from which the following is taken:

Search by Name in 1 Step
(Ancestry.com Search Form)

If you have a paid subscription to ancestry.com, you will be able to search the 1920 and 1930 census for a person by name (without knowing the address) and then view the image of that person’s census page. There is a form on the ancestry website that allows you to do this search.

The Ancestry.com Search Form presented here provides ancestry. com subscribers with an even more powerful search form than the one contained on the ancestry.com website. You can search in ways that were not possible otherwise.

Alternate search in 1 step
(Genealogy.com search form)

If you have a paid subscription to genealogy.com, you will be able to search various other census years for a person by name (without knowing the address) and then view the image of that person’s census page. There are various forms on the ancestry website that allows you to do this search.

The Genealogy.com Search Form presented here provides genealogy.com subscribers with the ability to search any year or state on the same form. The genealogy.com website requires you to navigate to different pages for each state or year that you wish to search.

The Roanoke County Library system has a subscription to Ances-tryPlus but you must physically go to the library to access the database. If you don’t have access to online information you can go to the City of Roanoke’s Virginia Room, which has the 1930 Virginia census on microfilm, but not the other states.

Elaine Powers is a former librarian in the Roanoke City Library’s Virginia Room who now works at the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg.