1950 Census Happy Dance

I went to bed last night not really thinking about the 1950 census but when I woke up around mid-night thirty I turned the coffee pot on and sat down with my roomie to watch the last few minutes of the Nets/Bucks game.

 Afterwards I grabbed another cup of Joe and slipped upstairs and hearing the statement, "you leaving me now?" To which I replied, "Nope, I'll be upstairs, if you need me." Silence...

 Taking that as my cue to giddy upstairs while I could, I settled back to do a little census search for my parents and two siblings that were born before 1950. Talk about taking me back to the "good old days of microfilm research" I finally found a link that took me to the actual census records roughly indexed by enumeration districts. Fair warning, if you are doing census research for Los Angeles, you need to do a little preparation because as we all know, L.A. is a big ass county.

 I downloaded some enumeration district maps months ago anticipating they might come in handy, eh! not so much...

 But, because I'm smarter than the average bear I thought of another strategy that might help me. Since 1950 was before the time and place we lived after I was born, I wasn't sure were my father and mother settled when they migrated to Los Angeles in the 40's but I had a vague idea.

 What I did to try and pin a location down on them in the wide world of Los Angeles was look for a voter registration record that might yield an address that I could then use the enumeration district maps more efficiently. 

This was a stroke of genius if I say so myself (smart bears are like that.) After I found a couple of addresses in 1948 and 1952 which covered the 1950 time period I was then able to slog through all of the various enumeration districts and descriptions to zone in on the area that the addresses were in the voter registration records for my father and mother. 

One of the addresses was news to me because I hadn’t heard about before; the other was one that brought up an old memory from when I was about four years old. I remember playing outside my mother’s bedroom window doing something “naughty” that got me in a whole lot of trouble (that’s another story that goes to the grave with me.) But what I remember (other than the “whupping” I got was we lived in the projects and right across the street from an elementary school. Didn’t know the name and couldn’t tell you where we lived; but because smart bears do what smart bears do, I googled the address I found in the voters registration index and (as Marvin Gaye said) I’ll be doggone…

There is a photo of my brother and sister when we lived in the projects with my brother on his tricycle that looked just like the place I googled:

But wait, there’s more!

When I went on Google street view the most amazing thing came up right across the street from this photo.

The school and projects are still there seventy years later!!!

Now all of these discoveries happened before I was able to located my parents, sister and brother for the first time in a census record so for those of you who know the joys of researching microfilm back in the day, I did my happy dance not once, not twice but three times this morning before my third cup of coffee!!!

HAPPY CENSUS HUNTING!