My Trails into the Past

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 c...

It's  Saturday Night  - time for more  Genealogy Fun! Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing is to: 1)  The 1950 United States Census was released by the U.S. National Archives on Friday, 1 April 2022.   2)  Did you make a list of your census targets and try to find them in the 1950 census?  How did your plans pay off - did you find everyone, or just some of them? 3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post. Be sure to leave a link with your answers in a comment. Here's mine: I planned to write about my first endeavors in locating my family in the 1950 census, so I am glad Randy chose this as our theme. I had other tasks to do and finally got researching in the evening of April 1. My first tries were unsuccessful. The search feature on the National Archives website was not bringing up my family at all. But no worries. I had used Steve Morse’s website and the tool Unifi...

It's  Saturday Night  - time for more  Genealogy Fun! Our mission is to: 1) The 1950 United States Census will be available to search on 1 April 2022 - less than three weeks away. How have you prepared yourself to search it? Have you found 1950 addresses of your family members and persons of interest? Have you identified the State, County, Town and Enumeration District? Have you made a table of your findings so you can systematically find everyone on your list? What will you do with the information you gather? 2) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post. Be sure to leave a link with your answers in a comment. Here's mine: I have been prepping for the upcoming release of the 1950 federal census and have written four blog posts about it. 1950 Census Prep for Norman’s Paternal Relatives 1950 Census Prep for Norman’s Maternal Relatives 1950 Census Prep: Paternal Relatives 1950 Census Prep: Maternal Rel...