1940 Census for the Carnival of Genealogy #117

Well finding my parents and all four grandparents was pretty easy, my mom and all four grandparents were in the same houses as in the 1930 census and will be in the same houses in the 1950 census. My dad did not stay in the same house he was listed in the 1930 census, in fact he actually was living in a lumber camp in 1930, but was listed with his parents in Spirit Valley Election Precinct. My dad was always interested in what I found on his family and was able to see himself listed in the 1910, 1920 and 1930 census. For 1940 I was pretty sure he had moved to Spokane, but not sure where. He talked about staying at a boarding house run by Mrs. Cook before he got married, so I looked for a Mrs. Cook in the city directory. While there was a whole page of Cooks only one lived in Hillyard at E. 2921 Queen Avenue, so with a little help from Steve Morse I found the Enumeration District and block number 142. There was 35 blocks in this Enumeration District and number 142 was near the end so I skipped through the images to close to the end and surprise it was one of the first blocks, so skipping back through the blocks I found out that the enumerator had started at the last block and worked to the first block, but the last person on page one of block 142 was Kate L. Cook a widow age 64 from Wisconsin. See below:

On the next page on line six was my dad Claude D. Hansen and his younger brother Leigh E. Hansen. My dad was working as a mechanic at Madren Brothers Studebaker dealership on Market and Everett in Hillyard. Leigh was working at a lumber yard south of Hillyard as a truck driver. Both my dad and Leigh always said that Mrs. Cook was a wonderful cook and they bought a meal ticket each week so they would not miss out on the meals.My dad was listed at the same address in 1935, by Uncle Leigh was listed as living on the farm with his parents (my grandparents) in the Spirit Valley Election Precinct in 1935.

I have driven by the house at E. 2921 Queen often over the years and never knew it was Mrs. Cooks boarding house. Madren Brothers closed years ago, and today the building is a beauty school teaching students on how to become a beautician. I find that hard to believe as there was so much grease and oil on the floors of the  repair shop where my dad worked that it seems hard to believe it is a school today.
Another surprise in the 1940 census was on the page where the description of the Enumeration District  for my grandparents at Spirit Valley Election Precinct, was TWO CCC camps, Camp F-159 had No Pop(ulation) while Camp S-263 had a Pop(ulation) of 2, but the men working in the camps were supposed to be listed with their parents not at the CCC Camp, only permanent residents of the CCC Camp were to be enumerated at the camp.

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy How To Books

Week #17 – How-To Book

Week 17: How-To Book: For which genealogy how-to book are you most thankful? Who wrote the book and why does it stand out in your eyes? Is the book currently available? How can other genealogists benefit from its content?

The book that helped me the most is Genealogical Guidebook & Atlas of Denmark by Frank Smith and Finn A. Thomsen. It was first published in 1969 and republished in 1986. Here is the Table of Contents:

• The Four Major Sources
• Some Danish words and their meanings
• Personal given names
• The Gothic Alphabet
• Map of the Counties of Denmark before 1793
• Map of the Counties of Denmark 1793-1970
• Map of the Counties of Denmark after 1970
• List of Parishes and Related Areas
• Maps of the counties showing Parishes
• Sectional Maps
• List of places Keyed to the Sectional Maps

Well I learned to read the Danish Gothic writing pretty well when I was actively researching in the Danish Records from this book, and so later when I took a workshop on the German Script I found I already knew how to read the German Script (but I do not know a single word in German).
The list of Parishes is great also as it also shows how far back those Parish records have been filmed by the Family History Library. My grandfathers parish back to 1692.
Maps and more maps, genealogists love maps and this book has plenty of maps.

Wordless Wednesday USS Langley

Picture of USS Langley the first US Aircraft Carrier

Saturday Night Fun Wordle Fun

Hey genea-addicts - it's SATURDAY NIGHT, time to kick back and have some GENEALOGY FUN!

Yes, I want you to X out of your Ancestry Member Tree, shut down your genealogy management program, tell your Facebook friends you're going to take a 30 minute break, step away from Evidence! Explained, and go on your weekly SNGF mission. It should take less than 30 minutes of your time.

Here is your mission, if you decide to accept it (shouldn't this be mandatory for all Genea-Musings readers every Saturday night?):

1) Find something that you have written (letter, report, book, website, blog post, etc.) and copy all or part of it (you know, do an Edit > Copy or a Ctrl-C on it). If it's a website with an RSS feed, then just copy the URL in the browser address bar.

2) go to www.wordle.net and put the copied text into the text box at http://www.wordle.net/create or URL at the site. Be creative - select a Font, a Layout, and a color scheme.

3) Capture the image by doing a screen capture, or by doing an image snip.

4) Show us your Wordle creation on your own blog, on a Facebook status, or on a Google Plus stream post.

5) What use to do see for a Wordle cloud that you created?

Ok This is a Wordle of the Spokane County Resource Page from the Washington State Genealogical Society website.

This is the Whitman County Resource guide Wordle from the WSGS website.
Well people can see the genealogical resources available for Spokane and Whitman couties.

Electric Power Pavilion Seattle Worlds Fair

Well April 21, 2012 will be the 50th anniversary of the opening day of the 1962 Seattle Worlds Fair. The Electric Power Pavilion was right near the base of the Space Needle, and with the water running down the spillways looks like a small hydro electric dam. Inside they had displays of various types of power plants.

All these pictures and brochures bring back a lot of memories and twelve years later Spokane hosted a Worlds Fair EXPO 74. Sure wished we had made a scrapbook for EXPO 74, but I do have several pictures.

Bubbleator and Skyride Seattle Worlds Fair

Well one of the fun attractions was the "Bubbleator" the round clear bubble elevator that took you to the top of the pavilion where you could wander down through the exhibits.


Another fun ride was the Sky Ride where you could ride above the whole worlds Fair.

Here is a picture of the gondolas. Seemed like the line was a lot longer than the ride, but we had to ride it.

Seattle Space Needle

My last blog post was a picture of the Space Needle being built, this picture shows the color the Space Needle was painted for the Seattle Worlds Fair.
On opening day President John Kennedy touched a famous gold telegraph key that activated a computer in Andover, Maine and relayed to Seattle where workmen cut a cord and released 2000 balloons to open the 1962 Seattle Worlds Fair.

A close up of the balloons that were set free to open the Seattle Worlds Fair.
Really looks tall when you are at the bottom looking up.

Wordless Wednesday Space Needle

Last May I did thirteen blog posts on the 1962 Seattle Worlds Fair and before that I did a Carnival Of Genealogy on Scrap-Booking, but there was a few pictures I did not copy, and with the 50 year anniversary of the 1962 Seattle Worlds Fair opening of April 21, 1962 coming in a few days I thought I would post a few more pictures. This picture was cut from the cover of Life magazine, a  picture of the Space Needle being built, but it is a wonderful picture of the workmen on the top of the Space Needle.

My mom, dad and my sister went to the Worlds Fair in August of 1962, and we took quite a few pictures of the Fair, this one is the Space Needle. We did get to go to the observation deck after a long wait in a line at the bottom of the Space Needle. There was a Belgian waffle stand next to the line, and so while we waited we had a Belgian waffle. mmmm.

Saturday Night Fun 1940 Census Claude Hansen

It's Saturday Night, let's have some Genealogy Fun!


Remember those Easter egg hunts you had when you were a kid? Or you hosted when you were a parent or grandparent of small children (or even big children...)? Remember the happiness and joy you had finding the eggs hidden in the garden or the field? And the goodies sometimes found inside them? I'm really looking forward to the Easter egg hunt in our front yard for Lolo and Audrey on Sunday morning.


I have a Genealogy Easter Egg Hunt for you! Here's the directions:


1. Pick a target family that you want to find in the 1940 U.S. Census.

2. Determine their street address if you can using the available information (see How Can I Find Out Where My Folks Lived in 1940? for ideas).

3. When you find an address, go to Google Maps or the NARA Enumeration District maps website (http://www.archives.gov/research/search/), or on ancestry.com (http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=3028) to find the specific block that your target family resided. Note the two cross streets and the back street for that block.

4. Go to the Steve Morse Unified 1940 Census ED Finder (http://stevemorse.org/census/unified.html) and enter your state, county, and street information in order to find the Enumeration district number for the target family.

5. Use the FREE MyHeritage.com 1940 census collection (http://www.myheritage.com/1940census) or the FREE Ancestry.com 1940 census collection (http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2442) to see the census images for your target state, county and Enumeration District.

6. Navigate page to page to find your target family. If you find the target family, show us! And save the page to your computer hard drive.

1. My dad has always been fun to find in the census, he was born in Minnesota in 1906, but his family moved to Montana in 1910, but they moved after the census so I found him in Minnesota an 1910, Montana in 1920, and so when the 1930 census came along I asked him where he was living in 1930. he said he was living in a lumber camp in North Idaho, so I thought I would look for his parents on a farm near Blanchard in Idaho and he was listed with his parents and younger brother Leigh. By 1940 my dad was living in Spokane, Washington and he said he was a lodger at Mrs. Cooks boarding house in Hillyard a neighborhood in the north east part of Spokane. Actually Hillyard was a separate town till 1925 when it was annexed to Spokane and it was named for James J. Hill who built the largest railroad yard west of Chicago here and they named the town Hill's Yard, later changed to Hillyard.

2. I looked in the city directory for a boarding house owned by a Cook, none listed, so I checked the list of Cooks in the directory (almost a whole page of surname Cook)and only one listed in Hillyard, Kate Cook at E. 2921 Queen Ave.

3. Since I still live in the neighborhood and on Queen Avenue but nearly a mile west of E. 2921 Queen Avenue I know the area well.

4. Steve Morse's locator showed the cross streets of Queen and Regal to be in both ED numbers 41-24 and 41-25, so looking at the descriptions of ED 24 and 25 I found that ED 24 went from Queen North and ED 25 went from Queen South. So since the odd numbers are on the north side of Avenues in this area I downloaded the descriptions of ED 41-24 and Block 142 Diamond Ave, Haven, Queen Ave, Regal contains this house. Note Kate Cook was the last person on the previous page of the census so does not show in this census, so I have that page and the one after this one also, found several names I recognize.



Well my dad was listed as a garage mechanic at a garage, actually he was working for Madren Brothers Studebaker garage then about a 4 block walk from Mrs. Cooks boarding house. My uncle Leigh was also there and he was listed as a truck driver at retail lumber, he was working at a lumber yard and did a lot of jobs from taking lumber off the saw rack to truck driving. The mill was a couple of miles south of Mrs. Cooks house and my uncle rode his bicycle to work each day which was downhill to work, but uphill at night. My mom lived about 9 blocks west and one block south, and they did not get married for about a year and a half after the 1940 census.

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy State Genealogical Societies

Week #14 – State and National Societies

Week 14. State and National Societies: Last week we paid tribute to local genealogical and historical societies. This week we’re going to think bigger. For which state, provincial or national society are you most thankful? What makes this society special? How do the publications and events of this group assist in your family history research?

I guess I am a little prejudice since I am a committee chairman for the Washington State Genealogical Society, so that is the one I am most thankful for.
WSGS Has a wonderful newsletter and a great editor Bonnie MacDonald.
WSGS has resource guides for researching in most of the counties, guess I need to finish the last county not in the Resource Guides.
WSGS indexed the 1910 census and it is available on the WSGS website.
WSGS has Centennial Certificates for pioneers in Washington before statehood November 11, 1889, and First Citizen certificates for those in Washington before December 31, 1900. WSGS also has a list of all those pioneers.
Besides indexing the 1910 census many members have helped the Washington State Digital Archives and help put over 30 million records online in the worlds first digital archives.
The WSGS website also has links to the genealogical libraries in the state, and the various regional state archives.
How has it helped my research? I use the Digital Archive almost every week, so i am really thankful for the resources online there, and thank WSGS for so much help with that archive.

Wordless Wednesday Easter Postcard

Another postcard from my dad's postcard collection, no date but most around 1912.



Not sure who Leon is? Maybe a classmate in school?