1950 US Census free on Ancestry & Familysearch

With the recent release of the 1950 US Census online, Helen Tovey takes a look at why this census is so important

The latest census to be made publicly available for the USA is the 1950 Census. It has been released by the National Archives (of America) in April. The release contains the names, ages, birthplaces, residences and relationships of more than 150 million people in the country then.

The collaborative aim of Ancestry and Familysearch is to make the 1950 US Census available for people to search in record time and free.

From 1 April, when the original census pages were released, the handwriting recognition technology was brought into use, transcribing the census in a matter of weeks.

Ancestry hope that by the summer, the entire census will be searchable.

To develop the AI handwriting recognition technology, Ancestry had to work with mock-ups of the 1950 US Census records (as the originals were not available from the National Archives (of America) until 1 April). documents. To this end the Ancestry team have had to put their handwriting recognition technology through its paces, simulating the appearance of old documents by burning, scrunching, walking on and driving on the mock-up pages.

ancestry.com & familysearch.org