Secrets of the Census: Who Lived in Fridley in 1940?

Who lived on your street in Fridley in 1940?

Last week the federal government released its data from the 1940 U.S. Census—including 36 handwritten pages about what was then Fridley Township.

Editor's note: You can see Fridley's 36 pages as individual PDFs uploaded to this post, but to get in close enough to read the fine print, you'll have to download them from the U.S. Census website.

In 1940, there were 1,392 people living in Fridley Township—about twice the 693 people living here in 1930, according to the Census.

You can find out a lot about them because for the first time the 1940 Census asked a host of new questions to capture a better picture of families and family life.

Names, addresses, ages and even more personal information like marital status, how many children a family had, how much they earned and what they did for a living were kept under wraps for 72 years—as required by a confidentiality law.

But now the ban has expired and you can get a capsule view of the people who lived on your street, or your own family, wherever they lived in the United States. For the first time, the Census asked women whether they had been married more than once, their age at their first marriage and the number of children born.

The 1940 Census offers a trove of data available online—about 3.8 million images—for anyone looking for family history or curious about the past.

About 132 million people were counted in the 1940 Census, including 21 million still alive today. That may include some of your relatives.

Many of these individuals survived the Great Depression and were part of the Greatest Generation, fighting or contributing to the effort during World War II and experiencing new technology, such as the television and microwave.

Fridley Township was Minnesota Enumeration District 2-17 (ED 2-17) in the 1940 Census. It included everything in the township besides Columbia Heights—even the islands in the Mississippi River.

Here are four more tips to help you cruise through history:

1. Where will I be able to research the 1940 census? The National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, provides free online access to the 1940 census at 1940census.archives.gov. Researchers are able to search the census using NARA's public access computers at any of the agency's archival locations or using any other computer connected to the Internet.

2. There is no name index in the 1940 census. You need to know the enumeration district to find someone. You can locate people by identifying where they lived in 1940 and then browsing the census population schedules for that enumeration district.

The National Archives has placed copies and descriptions of enumeration district maps in NARA's Online Public Access catalog. For more information, visit the 1940 census welcome page.

Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org are planning to index the 1940 Census by name.

3. How can I locate someone if I don't know where he or she lived? There are other sources that may provide addresses from around 1940. For more information, go to Start Your 1940 Census Research.

4. The National Archives will certify copies of pages in the 1940 census. Visit the National Archives or send your request to inquire@nara.gov. The cost to receive a certified copy by mail is $30.