Check it Out – Look Who Worked at the Cannery!

My husband’s grandfather, Arthur Nilsen, lived in Rio Linda in 1950 on a chicken ranch at South Sixth Street.[1] 

The ranch was in the lower left corner

The ranch was one of the houses in the circle

One of my success stories in locating family in the 1950 census on the National Archives website using the index was with the Arthur N. Nilsen family. I used a census map to determine the Enumeration District number, so I could use that with the search parameters. Nilsen came up with "Wilsen" instead, but I could see the members of the household as I expected: Arthur, Lena, Leonard, and Bernice. I corrected the error on their index.

Nilsen Household Details
Arthur N. Nilsen, aged 56, was listed as a chicken raiser in poultry production. He said he worked seventy hours the previous week at his business.

I assumed that his wife, Lena, also 56, would be listed as helping him. However, she worked seventeen hours the previous week on the belt feeder at a cannery. There were several canneries in Sacramento:[2]

• Libby, McNeill and Libby facility on 31st Street at Stockton Blvd.
• California Packing Company included many canning companies, especially Del Monte, which had four canneries in Sacramento.
• Bercut-Richards Cannery, an independent cannery company, was at North 7th Street and produced their own Sacramento brand.

Th Bercut-Richards Cannery was closest to where Lena lived and family remembers that she perhaps worked where they canned tomatoes for juice and sauce.

Also living with Arthur and Lena were Arthur’s son, Leonard, who was 29 years old and divorced. He worked as a “body maker machine operator” and worked forty hours the previous week. The Continental Can Company built a manufacturing plant on the east side of North 7th Street, directly across the Bercut-Richards plant.[3] Perhaps Lena and Leonard commuted to work together.

Finally, the youngest child of Arthur, Bernice, was in the household at age 16. As for work, she did work five hours the previous week outside of the home but was not looking for work. The five hours was likely babysitting or housework for another family. She was still attending high school. Questions about school were only asked of those who got the supplementary questions. Arthur’s household listing on the census fell exactly between the lines of the supplementary questions and no one was asked those questions.

So glad I checked out the Nilsen family in the 1950 census to discover more about their work on the ranch and in the cannery.

#52Ancestors-Week 14: Check it Out

This is my fifth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/) at Generations Cafe. I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

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[1] 1950 U.S. census, Sacramento Co, California, ED 34-9, sheet 15, household 141, Arthur N. Nilsen, image, 1950 Census (https://1950census.archives.gov/ : accessed 8 April 2022); National Archives, Washington, D.C.

[2] “History of Sacramento Cannery Industry,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sacramento_Cannery_Industry).  

[3] “Historical Resource Inventory and Evaluation Report, Bercut-Richards Packing Company Property,” Appendix G, part of an HRIER 06-061 Township 9 – Bercut-Richards Cannery, https://www.cityofsacramento.org/-/media/Corporate/Files/CDD/Planning/Environmental-Impact-Reports/Township-9/Appendix-G---Historial-Resources-Report.pdf. It is unclear where the rest of the report is. I couldn’t find it on the City of Sacramento website.

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