Confidential data from the 1950 census will be revealed Friday after a rule that required 6,373 microfilm census rolls to be kept private for 72 years elapses.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will release 6.4 million digitized pages from the 1950 census microfilm rolls on April 1, 2022, at 12:01 a.m, according to NARA.
The Nation Archives will provide the data free on its website, including names, ages, addresses and employment status, NARA announced.
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The 1950 census asked women their marital status and how many children they delivered, reported the Washington Post (WaPo). It also collected data on where people worked, their parents’ birthplace, their level of education and how much money everyone in the home made, the outlet reported.
A corporate genealogist with Ancestry.com, Crista Cowan, believes this will give people a way “to reconnect with a part of their past,” according to WaPo.
“It captures what was happening in [a] household, what the construction of the family,” Cowan told the Washington Post.
The National Archives used an Artificial Intelligence Optical Character Recognition text extraction tool to input the over 6,000 microfilm census rolls but had difficulty producing results when the microfilm rolls had: illegible handwriting, poor image orientation and issues with surname placement, according to NARA.
Lisa Louise Cooke, a Texas genealogist, told WaPo the NARA release is a “really big deal.”
“Typically, people interested in their family history are always looking at dead people,” she told the outlet. “This [census] collection includes many people who are currently alive today … so there’s a huge nostalgia component. They’re going to see their parents. They’re going to see people who they may have just recently lost.”
“It’s going to, for many people, rush back a lot of memories,” Cooke added.
Ancestry.com has a running clock on its website counting down the days until the data is released. (RELATED: US White Population Declines By 8.6%, First Time In History, New Census Shows)
“Over 151 million people were recorded in this census (that’s 14% more than in 1940), and about 30 million of those were age nine and under, appearing in a census for the first time,” the website said.
The census covered people living in the continental U.S., territories of Alaska and Hawaii, American Samoa, Puerto Rice, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to NARA.