As others have pointed out, FamilySearch will be indexing the records and making them available for free. It's a massive effort involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers plus a large investment in technology and other resources:
By comparison, Ancestry (now owned by Blackstone Inc.) will charge money to access these public records ... and this comes on heels of jacking up subscription prices across the board, up to 25% (https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/were-increasing-our-...)
MyHeritage is also indexing 1950 records, but these will be paywalled like Ancestry.
my public library has a subscription to both myheritage and ancestry.com and allow for most records to be obtained for free. check if yours has a similar program.
edit: what you should be doing if you do have public library access to these sites, is you should be saving your records locally using software like Gramps or Zotero. Maybe both? I'm still learning the ecosystem but good genealogists depend on documentation, and documentation worth having is the documentation you keep safe locally.
While it is true that there are some records that are not available online, it has little to do with being Mormon.
Usually it means the data is still only available on a microfiche and has to be viewed in-person.
The only exception to this rule is that FamilySearch has paid partnerships with a few organizations to aggregate their information. The LDS (Mormon) church only pays for church members to have access to that aggregated information. Non-church members have to get their own subscriptions.
> They're not viewable because they only permit Mormons to view them.
Do you have a source for that? I'm not a Mormon, and can use the site without restriction, including viewing records from other countries. The site does not ask questions about religious affiliation when registering.
Regarding indexing: For some types of documents it's incomplete or the volunteer crew hasn't gotten around to it. I always check the original image when it's presented to get extra details.
For what it's worth, Ancestry has similar problems in its own index and the way it organizes some data. Some records are not viewable at all, just a very high-level index entry that reads more like a footnote.
LDS research centers are open to anyone regardless of religion. Some records are digitized but have access restricted to the research centers; others may be only available on paper or microfiche.
> FamilySearch has unique records from the Philippines related to my wife's (long lost) family that are indexed but not viewable.
I pay out the nose for Ancestry.com and also come across indexed data that isn't viewable. I suspect this is because the data was literally only indexed and not archived (yet?) photographically. Possibly the digital index was copied from a handwritten index, without access to the original documents. Fortunately for me all such data I've come across has been redundant, except for some Missouri marriage record data with conflicting dates--both sets of data were just from indices; the original records aren't viewable, which in this case I assumed--without evidence--was due to some privacy concerns given the records are from the 1960s.
> FamilySearch is the worst of the 3 big genealogy websites.
It's free! Plus, there's little I've been able to find on Ancestry.com and not FamilySearch. I think in one or two instances FamilySearch actually had better data. And on many occasions FamilySearch's presentation of data was easier to grok, making it easier to sift through data during the initial stages of a hunt.
A big pro for Ancestry.com is definitely non-U.S. databases, but at least in my case those databases are only relevant past 3-4 generations, at which point it becomes very difficult (at least for myself as an amateur) to have any confidence in associations without independent corroboration. (You'd be surprised how often names and dates line up coincidentally. In one case I found two candidate families where in addition to the parents 3 children in each family had the same names and similar birth years. It took me countless hours of sleuthing to be able to confidently rule one of the families out.) If you already have that extra bit of information, though, then the databases lose a little of their unique value. (Definitely worth it if you're serious, but most people aren't as invested as they think.) IME, the best value proposition of Ancestry.com is its popularity. There are multiple connections and facts I never would have been able to discover, let alone confirm, without information from family trees published on Ancestry.com. Specifically, trees from people in possession of physical records, or die-hard sleuths who traveled to tiny villages across the world to photograph religious records not available anywhere else. There are very few people who are willing and capable of putting in that sort of work (almost everybody simply copies subtrees from each other, which is a very dangerous thing to do if you care about accuracy--errors propagate like wildfire). Because of it's popularity you'll find more of those people on Ancestry.com than elsewhere.
I'm sorry you feel that way. What records are you looking for?
Here's a page describing the available genealogical records from the Philippines and where you can find them: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Philippines_Online_Gene... In some cases, FamilySearch may have only the indexed (textual) data, and commercial providers may charge for access to the images.
FamilySearch has contracts with some of those commercial providers to grant church members free accounts, which I think is what ianhawes is describing. General access in those cases is available from the providers at their usual rates.
I was using this to try to find the records that included my family. The search for 'Firstname Lastname" seems to search for Firstname OR Lastname. Does anybody know if its possible to search for Firstname AND Lastname and what the syntax for that might be? It seems to just still match any of the strings when entered that way.
Wait for this to appear on FamilySearch (if not already) and search there I think will be your best bet. FamilySearch is owned by the Mormons but free and very functional.
FamilySearch is fantastic. They do require you to make an account to use their website, but it’s free. They are meticulous about records preservation worldwide and expansive about records access, at least when the underlying government archive or agency is not being a hardass about it.
They even have teams filming and photographing records in some of the Ukrainian archives branches right now, even while under siege. They are serious about saving copies of world cultural history, it’s just that they emphasize family history.
Yes, they are the best. I used them several years ago when constructing my family tree.
And a big raspberry to their competitors that lock everything behind a paywall. I think one of them (ancestry) has exclusive deals with some states, so they have records you can't see without signing up.
They do. I’ve seen the contracts, and even the RFP’s that led to the contracts. It’s illegal.
They will sometimes make a free gateway portal to those records, where you input your in-state zipcode to get access, or some other nonsense like that. But they actually have the gall to say in their contracts that the digital files cannot be redistributed by the (public, taxpayer-funded) state or local archive. Funny, the state law says they can’t do that…
And so the non-profit I founded and run is starting to reclaim those public records, for the public, for free.
Just curious, is there any special significance in pointing out it's owned by Mormons?
The Mormons are really good at this sort of thing. Really really good.
Also, it's trendy for a subset of angry people on the internet to hate the Mormons for various reasons, both real and imagined.
And, there is a very tiny, but very vocal, number of people who will not use any service that might be even tangentially related to a religion. They're afraid of getting Jesus cooties or something.
to be fair, people who are outside the organization and/or critical tend to say "Mormon" while those in the organization that I have spoken with, carefully say "Latter Day Saints" or LDS every time.
ps- sincere thanks to the LDS Temple letting me use their library and record search for many weeks, long ago
outside the organization and/or critical tend to say "Mormon" while those in the organization that I have spoken with, carefully say "Latter Day Saints" or LDS every time.
I used to be good like that, but since I've moved away from areas with high LDS populations, I've lapsed into just the word "Mormon" again. Probably because that's what I grew up with in a non-LDS region, so I don't automatically associate the word "Mormon" with bring critical of LDS.
To clarify, only direct relatives can give permission to baptize a deceased relative by proxy in the temple. So if you're worried that simply adding a name to FamilySearch guarantees they will be baptized, that is not the case unless you have a relative that is a member of the church.
This explains a strange interaction I had on FamilySearch. I knew they were owned by the Mormons, but I was doing some cleanup (think deduplication/obvious typo correction stuff) on older records in my line, when someone on the site messaged me and essentially gave me first dibs on... I don't remember the exact phrase, "registering ordinances" or something like this for the person in question, because I was a direct patrilineal descendant. In retrospect I think it was related to this baptism-by-proxy thing, maybe?
Yeah that definitely sounds like it was related to the baptism-by-proxy. There are other ordinances in the temple that are also done by proxy for the deceased which is why they phrased it like "registering ordinances".
It sounds like a distant relative of yours saw your contributions and assumed your were Mormon and wanted to make sure you had the chance to be the proxy for your ancestor before another relative did it for you. That's not required, it was just a common courtesy.
For clarity: I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). I've also done development work on sites that used the FamilySearch API, I've served as an "ordinance worker" in the temple, and have done some of my own family history work on FamilySearch.
> For clarity: I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). I've also done development work on sites that used the FamilySearch API, I've served as an "ordinance worker" in the temple, and have done some of my own family history work on FamilySearch.
Then may I ask you about the provisions available to opt-out for baptism by proxy?
Is it possible to contact the church of LDS to refuse in advance, should any descendent (or proxy) convert, then want me baptized at any point in the future?
[Just in case it's not clear, that's a serious question.]
I'm asking while I'm alive because I won't be able to opt-out when I'm dead.
Good question. I am not aware of any "opt-out" list for baptism by proxy.
The doctrine of the church, however, is that even if a person is baptized by proxy it has no efficacy if the person in the afterlife chooses not to accept it. The agency to choose is a core belief, and we believe it is important for the individual to decide whether they want to be baptized or not.
I still understand your desire to not even have the ordinance done in the first place regardless of whether you believe it does anything, but like I said before I'm not aware of any way to "opt-out". I wish I could be more helpful.
So I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and can I ask you an honest question. Is there a reason you don't want to have that happen? I am asking honestly in the Spirit of inquiry it's something that always confused me to a certain extant, if the religion isn't true and it doesn't mean anything is there a reason the idea of someone saying a prayer with your name in it after you are dead bothers you? I just am curious about the line of reasoning, if it is just a matter of you don't like the idea, and don't feel comfortable about it I can understand that as well. I am just curious.
> can I ask you an honest question. Is there a reason you don't want to have that happen?
Of course: it's just a question of consent and respect.
I respect your faith, I would hope mine would be respected too, which is why I do object to being engaged in a baptism even 1) after having very clearly expressed when I'm alive that I do not consent to that but 2) under the assumption that when I'm dead, if a descendant consents, my own consent is void and no longer matters!
> if the religion isn't true and it doesn't mean anything
My point is the exact opposite: if it's true and it means everything, then surely you can understand my rejection!
Let's look at that differently: imagine I belong to a different religious movement, and that we have an "antibaptism" that can retrospectively negate baptism, snatch your soul from wherever it may be, and send it on its way to our deity - or to oblivion, or to damnation, or to whatever feels uneasy and disturbing.
Would you not want to object to have that done do you, instead of saying it wouldn't matter when you're dead?
Even "if the religion isn't true and it doesn't mean anything", it may disturb you.
> I just am curious about the line of reasoning
I tried to explain in good faith my uneasiness with the practice.
More or less: "Before you perform ordinances for a deceased person born within the last 95 years, obtain permission from the closest living relative. Relatives may not want the ordinances performed or may want to perform the ordinances themselves. The closest living relatives are, in this order: a spouse, then children, then parents, then siblings." https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/introductio...
They apparently care allot (thus try to do it right)
in part because they perform posthumous baptisms
to boost the numbers in their internal scorecards
to achieve a hi-score of some sort.
If you happen to know the address of where the individual lived, you can make a much more targeted search if you know the census enumeration district. With the ED in hand, just looking up by last name may be sufficient, but you can also just step through the individual sheets.
This site has a way to look up the ED by street address:
Depending on the street, there will be 1 or more districts; e.g.: "9-27", etc. Just enter that string in the "Enumeration District" search field. I knew the addresses of several relatives based on the 1940 census and it made looking them up in the 1950 census very easy.
> Tip #1: Search for the first and last name of the head of household (plus state and county of residence if known) because the surname was written on the census form only on the line for the head of household and other persons in the household with a different surname.
> Tip #3: You don't have to know the exact spelling of a person's name in order to perform a name search. Enter as much as you know. The search engine will return any close variations or matches.
The FAQ also adds:
> Is there a name index to the 1950 Census?
> Yes, researchers will be able to search the 1950 census by name. Please note that the name index will not be 100% accurate because it is based on optical character recognition (OCR) and artificial intelligence/machine learning. The website will feature a transcription tool to enable users to submit name updates, which will improve the accuracy of the name index and make the records more accessible for everyone.
It seems impossible to find anyone regardless. My mom's family has common names, so there are pages and pages to wade through. Meanwhile my dad's family has a very unusual last name, but their data seems to be missing from the 1950 census.
After spending 3+ years fighting with Ancestry’s UI for census data - I’m delighted to see how good the UI is, on day 1, from a .gov - well done to all involved
It took me a while to find my family because my name is obscure, which you would think would be the opposite. Because it's obscure the census takers had a hard time getting the spelling right and would cross it out and rewrite it. Which, in turn, seems like it made it much harder for the ML to figure out.
What a great historical piece. Very interesting to see their is no Hispanic race option. California ?!
70 years is a very good amount of time , by the most of the people affected are dead, and the living can glace back into the past. Cool to see jobs being listed as well, you can trace a families path from poverty to affluence and perhaps vice versa.
After looking at several records, it appears that Hispanics have a superscript 0 after the 'W' for white. Hispanic, strictly speaking, is not a race as people from Central and South America have different percentages of spanish, indigenous and in some cases african ancestry. I wonder how it came to be regarded as one in the US (I'm not american).
It isn't treated as a race in the US either, it's a separate question (so people can identify as white and Hispanic, or black and Hispanic, or other combinations).
If someone was serving in Korea at this time, they aren't going to show up in these records, are they?
EDIT - the Census would have been conducted in spring 1950, while the first troops arrived in July 1950. So presumably they would have been on military bases in the US and then perhaps counted in the census...
What's concerning to me is that 1) the census is mandatory on the basis that the answers are private but 2) all the information will be made public about 70 years later.
What if you don't want to volunteer your information?
There is a balance between privacy and the public interest (historical records). For example, immigration data ("A-files") from USCIS is released after 100 years of an immigrant's birth date to the National Archives [1], under the assumption that everyone is deceased after 100 years and no longer have rights to privacy protections (US-centric law). This is the same reason FamilySearch (the Mormon genealogy application) is very aggressive about ensuring you properly mark subjects as deceased or not. There is a duty of care with regards to a living subject's vital information that does not exist for the deceased (deceased subject vital information is available to all on FamilySearch, living subject vital information is only available to the account that created the record).
70 years seems reasonable considering the lack of sensitivity of census information, and while rental records aren't public, property ownership records are and are frequently used as well for location information (FamilySearch indexes public property record information for ancestor location hints and other vital correlation [2]).
That is even more concerning! I believe my right to privacy is more important than any public interest or historical record.
> This is the same reason FamilySearch (the Mormon genealogy application) is very aggressive about ensuring you properly mark subjects as deceased or not.
What if I want to ensure I will never be posthumously baptized?
There may be an "opt out" by contacting the LDS, but them not having my information making that possible in the first place would guarantee the end result, far more than trusting them to keep their word!
And what about the next religious movement that tries to do the same?
I think we need an equivalent of the GPDR right to be forgotten. Some people care about their legacy? I don't! When I'm dead, I want to be scrubbed from all records, census included.
> …my right to privacy is more important than any public interest…
Society in general disagrees with you. Most think that people should have some level of privacy, but I have to think that privileging privacy over all other concerns is a pretty rare viewpoint. The kind of absolute privacy you desire has probably not been possible since the invention of writing.
Also, the European right to be forgotten is not a blanket "forget everything about everyone", but merely a way for a person to request that specific, old, embarrassing information about themselves be no longer published.
Not fully: when you are alive, you can write a contract to dispose of your goods when you die - say to give something to causes, people or even animals you hold dear: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02gift.html
I wish there was such a possibility to ensure your private information is disposed of in the way you want.
And while you are required to give answers to the census-taker, you are not required to give truthful answers. A significant number of my female relatives seemed to age very slowly or even in reverse through the decades…
If you want to prevent people 72 years in the future from finding out about you, you are going to have to do a lot more than dodge the census taker. Maybe you could accomplish this by living in the wilderness with no internet, phone, or postal service, but I wouldn't even count on that.
There is a crowd-sourced effort to "index" (create textual copies of the information) in the images sponsored by FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/1950census/ They will make the images and data searchable and available for free (free registration required).
I don't know how long the overall effort will take - but you can also participate as much as you like!
https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/p/1950-census.html
One of the more interesting optional annotations: Enumerators could note if they thought the respondent was lying, and write down what they thought the truth was! (https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/2020/01/extra-nota...)
As others have pointed out, FamilySearch will be indexing the records and making them available for free. It's a massive effort involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers plus a large investment in technology and other resources:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/info/1950-census-details
By comparison, Ancestry (now owned by Blackstone Inc.) will charge money to access these public records ... and this comes on heels of jacking up subscription prices across the board, up to 25% (https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/were-increasing-our-...)
MyHeritage is also indexing 1950 records, but these will be paywalled like Ancestry.