Most genealogists are very familiar with searching Ancestry or FamilySearch for individuals in the U.S. federal census population schedule, but not as many know that they can look for people in the census by address. For 1880-1950, there is a tool that can be used to enter an address – either a street name or an exact house number – and find the census images for that address.
Why might you want to do this if you can simply search by name?
Recently, I was looking for the 1930 census entry for my 2x great grandmother, Victorine (Dupuy) Hinton. I knew that she and her husband were living on N. Drennan Street in Houston in 1929, but they were nowhere to be found in the 1930 census when searching by name, even trying multiple websites in case it was an indexing issue. ((“U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995,” database with images, Ancestry (http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2469 : accessed 1 June 2017), entry for Victorine Hinton, Houston, Texas, 1929; citing Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co., publishers, Houston (Texas) City Directory: 1929-1930… (Houston: Morrison & Fourmy Directory Company, 1930), entry for Hinton, Virgil F (Victorine), 968))
Using Steve Morse’s One-Step Webpages, I was able to look up the enumeration district for their street and view the census pages. This powerful tool makes it painless to find an enumeration district; even better, it links directly to the census images online.
The process is straightforward and the more information you have, the better your results will be. Below are the steps I took to determine that Victorine’s household was skipped by the enumerator in 1930.
The Enumeration District Finder Tool
Enter the Year
The ED finder tool is located at http://stevemorse.org/census/unified.html and the very first step is easy to miss: choose the correct census year. There is a dropdown menu at the very top of the page in the title that is critical to getting the correct information. If you fail to choose the proper year, the form will return results for the default year (1940).
Enter the State, County, and City
Virgil F and Victorine Hinton lived at 216 N. Drennan in Houston, Texas (Harris County), in 1929. Using the dropdown lists, I chose Texas, Harris County, and Houston (the county is optional). This will auto populate the street dropdown menu.
Select the Street
Once the street dropdown is finished populating, select the street from the dropdown menu. In my case, the address for Victorine was N. Drennan, but I wanted to be sure I did not miss any entries so I went through the process for both Drennan and N. Drennan. There are several helpful options on the resulting page that can give you additional information. Using the map options will allow you to enter the bounding streets if you know them, narrowing the results (you might need to check for changed street names). Each time you enter a bounding street it gives you another field so you can narrow it down further.
Clicking “More Details” on the main search page in the above image takes you to the One Step Enumerator Descriptions Page for that ED. The page lists information about the enumeration district and the NARA microfilm roll it is on, but more useful are the links to the same district in the surrounding census years. This can be helpful for finding out if the home who lived in the home each decade, tracking neighbors, and seeing how the makeup of the neighborhood changed over time. The page also indicates if there are any institutions in that ED, as can be seen below with the School of the Blessed Sacrament.
The links to the enumerations districts in the lower left corner on the main results page are what we are looking for. These links take you to a reults page where you can access the actual census pages. ((This may seem like an extraneous click, but the ED Finder we are using is a combination of several individual One Step tools, and the link leads to the “Viewing Census Images for the [year] Census in One Step” tool. By using this combined tool, we have actually cut out several steps.))
An image of the results page is below. You can access the images of the census pages you have specified either through Ancestry (“Display”) or FamilySearch, NARA, or the Internet Archive (“Free Display”). Because the database queries are labor intensive the actual census images will take longer than usual to load.
At this point, I simply browsed the images in the ED. Rather than scanning the surnames, I was able to browse the the street names more quickly because they often span several families. In the case of the Hintons, it was clear that despite enumerating many families on N. Drennan and Drennan streets, the household at 216 N. Drennan was skipped.
Our spreadsheet sets are a great way to record the data. When I am researching, I have a spreadsheet file for each individual I am tracking where all of their census data is in one file, along with the listings of the people before and after them; this is a good idea even where there is negative evidence. It’s amazing to see patterns emerge that let me track their FAN club over time. Let me know if this tool turns out to be helpful to you, or if there are other One Step tools on Steve Morse’s site that you have used successfully.
Ronald Harris says
I have census records but no address. I want address so I can drive there. Will this file give me an address?
Thank you.
Ronald Harris
Mary Ann says
Hi Ronald – The CensusTools files are blank templates with no data. If there is no address on the census form itself, then I’m afraid it will be difficult to find the address. You might try looking at the censuses in the years surrounding the one without an address, or see if there are any city directories available with the street address for the family.
Noah Vail says
What I’m trying to avoid is browsing entire rolls to locate an address.
This points me to the correct rolls (which I can glean via keyword search). What I need is the page with a certain street name + house number.
If that isn’t possible, I can use a list of all the page numbers that contain a given street name.
Laura HM says
Thank you! I have found this tool very useful.
Toria says
This census tool is FANTASTIC!!! So far, the 5 family members I have searched from 1930 – 1950, the census taker completely skipped, omitted or ignored those addresses. They were supposed to indicate Not Home, Vacant, No Answer, etc. on the census form next to the address. There were addresses written in, but blank info & on 2 others, the addresses were not written in at all. Very irritating. I now have a way to find all my ancestors’ census information by address. Thank you so much for such a helpful tool!
Mary Ann says
Steve’s tool is truly a great help in cases like this. I recently read a post about a census enumerator who made up entire families to fill the census forms! The author postulated that due to the map not having a compass rose on it, the enumerator turned the wrong direction, filled in the wrong addresses, and when he realized what he had done he just made up info instead of starting over.
Sally Leigh says
I LOVE the Steve Morse tools! 💕
Looks like this page has changed to default to the 1950 census, now. I don’t see any place on the page to change the year. (I was actually looking for the 1940 census.) Any idea how to switch the year now?
Mary Ann says
Hi Sally – The dropdown is still there with the years. It is defaulted to 1950, but it is at the very top where it says “Unified –dropdown year– Census ED Finder.” It’s not the first place I’d look for it, and it took me awhile to figure out where it was the first time I used the tool. There is a screenshot above in this post showing the dropdown, and it’s still in the same place.
Harriet Heller says
I am looking for 1970 for 2911 Marlin Ave. Tampa Fl.
Mary Ann says
The 1970 census has not been made public yet. Privacy laws prevent the release of census data for 70 years. The most recent census to be made public is the 1950 census.
Michele Robinson says
Hello, I’m trying to locate 1950 and 1960 Census for 591 North 5th Street Newark, NJ
Mary Ann says
The 1960 census has not been publicly released yet. You should be able to use the process described here to locate the census for that address in the 1950 census.
Thomas McDowell says
I have been trying to find the address of my great great grandfather and great great grandmother Ira and Lydia McDewel. This was how they were listed in the census because they were freed slaves and couldn’t read nor write. My name is Thomas McDowell Jr
Mary Ann says
Hi Thomas – I suggest searching at FamilySearch.org or Ancestry.com for census records for your ancestors. In rural areas there may not be a specific address listed, just the houses in the order they were visited.