A 1940 article about the census enumeration for that year is titled “Census Recheck Total is 2,421” and that means people not originally enumerated in Dade County, Florida. How many times was this repeated around the United States? In this case, the census supervisor was forwarding the information to the census bureau.

Click here to read the full article in the Miami Daily News of Sunday, 7 July 1940, Section D, page 1, column 4.

Newspapers across the country carried articles into July of 1940 urging people to come forward if they had been missed. Others reported that school children were being instructed to make sure their families had been counted. The St. Petersburg Times of 27 June 1940 (page 5, column 4) said “Friday’s Your Last Chance to Be Enumerated!”

The Prescott, Arizona Evening Courier of Monday, 29 July 1940, page 2, columns 3-4 even carried a coupon that you could fill out and send in. It stated that you had been missed! The newspaper would then send it to the state census supervisor. Now I wonder if anyone filled these in, were they actually added to the enumeration, and were these forms saved!

Were all the late additions added in the pages where the rest of their enumeration district was listed? Will we find them next week if we zero in on the enumeration district where we expect to find them? Are they on a later set of pages? This is why we need to index the census. Sign up today to help with the indexing. It’s easy to do while sitting in your own home, at your computer, and in your fuzzy slippers. For more on the volunteer indexing project please click here.

All of these articles were accessed through Google News Archives.

© 2012 – 2014, Paula Stuart-Warren. All rights reserved.