RootsChat.Com
Research in Other Countries => United States of America => US Resources & Offers => Topic started by: GrahamSimons on Wednesday 08 August 12 23:11 BST (UK)
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In case fellow RootsChatters hadn't seen this - Ancestry now has all States searchable and the census is free on the site at present (you may need to register).
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Also, many states are indexed at www.familysearch.org, and all images are available there or at http://1940census.archives.gov/.
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...and more experience (I've been busily gap-filling)
The Family Search website sometimes generates results that Ancestry doesn't (and vice versa)
Don't always expect full names - John William Jones may well be enumerated as Billy Jones or J W Jones or even W J Jones, so some imaginative searching may help a lot. On Ancestry, the "lived in" slot on the search form helps quite a bit (unless the family have moved to a different State, as I discovered to my frustration).
The census forms give some information that those of us used to the UK census don't get - for example income and house value; the two columns for occupation tend to tell more than the sometimes opaque UK statements; however birthplaces are at State level only, rather than town.
I've had a fascinating time!