1940 Census, New York

[alexpgp]

Courtesy of the folks at Ancestry.com, the data for the 1940 Census is available online for selected localities. New York City is apparently one of them.

On April 1, 1940, my father Carlos, a white, single, 32-year-old male was a "Guest" at the Mills Hotel in New York City. He had not attended school or college at any time since March 1, 1940 and is shown as having completed three years of college. His birthplace is shown as Indiana.

(Side note: The census form's column heading for place of birth (a) distinguishes "Canada-French" from "Canada-English" and "Irish Free State (Eire)" from "Northern Ireland" and (b) provides the following guidance: "If foreign born, give country in which birthplace was situated on January 1, 1937." A reminder that borders were pretty fluid then, just as they are now.)

The census was interested in knowing where a listed person was living on April 1, 1935, and "Huntington, Indiana" is shown for my father; a separate column notes said the residence was not on a farm.

My father had not been "AT WORK for pay or profit in private or nonemergency Government work during the week of March 24-30," nor had he been "at work on, or assigned to, public EMERGENCY WORK (WPS, NYA, CCC, etc.) during the week of March 24-30," although he had been "SEEKING WORK." At the time the census was taken, my father, a newspaper reporter, had been unemployed for 17 weeks. He had worked for 40 weeks in 1939, earning $1,400 (which sounds strange to my modern ears, since that's about what I pay the bank every month for the house today).

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

I found our listing in Huron, SD. I discovered we had a "maid" - 19 at the time - and was able to track her later life with Google. I was also surprised to find that long time family friends were our next door neighbors. I checked Google Maps and I think that whole area was rebuilt some time in the 50's, so couldn't look to see what the old place looked like. Interesting stuff, although having to page through all the documents instead of being able to search by name was a drag. It took several hours, even with such a small city as Huron.