Family Historian User Group

Need help with a query! I'm not going to pretend to know how to do what I want, so I'm asking for this group's extensive knowledge of how to do this.

The 1950 U.S. Federal Census has just come out, and granted it will take a while to all be put online but that's irrelevant at the moment.

Here's what I need to find out in FH7 (latest version): I have people/citations/sources in the 1940 census. For 1950, I need to know who I have in the 1940 census, and if they would have still been alive to go look for in the 1950 census. Basically, there's no point in looking for somebody in 1950 if they've already died!

When you tell me how to do what I need, please, please, please give explicit instructions!

Thank you in advance for you help! 'Preciate you!
Nikki

Hi Nikki,
This was raised for the UK 1921 census in this topic: https://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic ... 32&t=20324 - not a trivial task by all accounts.
Mike (Tatewise) may be able to tell you if his Census plugin might help with this task.

Hi Nikki.
I suspect there is going to be a great deal of interest in focusing on 1950 USA Census candidates.

May I suggest that you don't restrict that focus to people who appeared in the 1940 USA Census.
Immigrants and people born since 1940 will also be candidates for the 1950 Census searches.

Anyway, to filter people who appeared in the 1940 Census we need to know how you record those entries.
Does every person have their own Census Event or does only the Head of Household have a Census Event and the other members are Fact Witnesses? This is why it is easier to ignore old Census facts.

There are several tools that can help with such searches: Queries, Property Box Tabs, Plugins, etc.
Unfortunately, they all focus on UK Census years 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, 1921, 1939.
It would be helpful if some US users could update the FHUG KB Downloads for US Census years.

One Query that might be useful is in the FHUG KB Downloads for Individual Queries Ready for Census 1921 but it needs adjusting for the 1950 Census, so I have done that for you as Attachment Ready for Census 1950.

I also hope to update my Lookup Missing Census Facts plugin to include the US 1950 Census. Have you ever used that?

Neil and Mike:
Thank you sooo much for your quick replies! It was a nice surprise to check for this morning.

How I record my census entries is as follows: First, I do my census extraction form that I made in Word and all decades are exactly like the National Archives forms (that way, I've got specifics for the citation). I then make a fact entry for the head of household, and do the citation (and I started out making that fact source a "generic citation" decades ago, so have just kept doing it that way). I then copy/paste that fact to the other people enumerated in that household (and that household could also include other family members such as kids, parents, mother/father in-law, cousins, sisters/brothers, aunts/uncles--I've seen that tons of times!, and they all get the fact also). That person, if they have an occupation in the census, gets that fact with the census as the citation source. Pretty straightforward, really.

How I have named my census sources is, for example, "1940 PA Census, Joe Blow and spouse Jane Smith." And if the state is not PA (Pennsylvania), I do that state's two-letter abbreviation. Suffice it to say that if what I I need to look for as far as 1950 were all "1940 PA ...." I wouldn't even be having to ask for this help, amiright? Not all my peeps lived in the same state their whole lives, both maternal and paternal sides. And looking for people in 1950 would also include any female kids who married between 1940-1950 and *their* spouses! See the rabbit hole this starts going down? Yeah, this is going to be a gargantuan task, fer sure!!

I've downloaded your "Ready for Census 1950.fhq" query and will be checking it out today. What I need it to do, which I'm assuming this will be the case, is output the search query so I can save it as a .csv file and bring it up in Excel to have something to go by as to who to look for online, and then highlight that person on the Excel file to let me know I've found them. Any census image I find, of course, will be put in their own "1950 Census" folder.

I will also go get your Lookup Missing Census Facts plugin because I'm sure along the way I've missed some people (no matter the decade) for any number of reasons (my brain is fried, I don't feel like looking for this right now, they're just plain not in the census, and I'm sure there's several other reasons!).

Thank you both, again, for your awesome help!
Nikki

bubbalicious wrote: ↑

04 Apr 2022 12:07

I save it as a .csv file and bring it up in Excel to have something to go by as to who to look for online, and then highlight that person on the Excel file to let me know I've found them.

Have you considered keeping it within FH, and adding your query results to a named list?
Then, as you find them, delete them from the list.

This is a bit better than using excel, because as you click on a name in the list, they pop into focus in FH, so you don’t need to go looking for them.

Good suggestion! Thank you. Yeah, I've used named lists before and they work quite well.

I also didn't mention previously that I have all of my census jpgs in their own folder, by decade, and as of this morning, I have 330 jpgs in 1940!! And that's just for the head of household (my naming convention for census files). So probably triple (or more) that 330 number as far people to look for. I think my head is going to explode

Nikki

I did the USA one awhile back based on mt's UK. this should be a good start.

Mike Tate, you are a genius!!! I've run your "Ready for Census 1950" query and it's awesome! It output exactly what I wanted to know, and then some, but it's still simple enough to see at a glance who to go find. Good thing I made notes in the main property tab as to whether or not a person was not in a particular census and do I need to look again just for grins, or if they did not have a death cert/obit/funeral notice. I've found along the way that sometimes people just didn't want to be in the census, for whatever reason, and if they're still not findable you just have to let it go.

The seriously cool thing about your query is that it can be re-run at any time and I can have updated results. I'm still inputting data and that's going to be an on-going process for some time to come, especially for census stuff. You know how it goes -- you go looking for somebody, find records you weren't even looking for, and then say "I'll put it in FH7 later." Well, later has come and I'm playing catch-up.

Thank you again for making this query and all of your contributions to FH. You rock!!!!!!

Sincerely,
Nikki