1930 Ad

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 29, 2002 | by Joyce Howard

The U.S. Census Bureau has released what it calls a "genealogy treasure": the handwritten forms from each American household that participated in the 1930 census. The forms have been protected for 72 years as part of the confidentiality requirements of the federal law under which the census is taken.

Like the official population count, the release of enumerators' census forms occurs just once every 10 years. The Census Bureau notes that it's an occasion of much interest to genealogy buffs eager to learn more about their family history.

There is particular interest in responses to the 1930 census because they were given at the start of the Great Depression. Enumerators began knocking on doors on April 1 that year, just five months after the stock market collapse.

The 1930 census counted a population of slightly less than 123 million, about 44 percent of the 281 million counted in the 2000 census. The nation was far more agrarian in 1930 than it is today, with one in five families living on a farm. In addition, the 1930 census was the last survey that put the nation's population at more than 10 percent foreign-born until 2000.

JOYCE HOWARD PRICE WRITES FOR Insight's SISTER DAILY, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.