It is April 2nd and it’s Census Day!

At midnight, three companies picked up their copies of the census from NARA and are already busy uploading the files. As of 12:30am MDT, Ancestry.com has some images available for DC, Nevada, and it appears they have just begun to upload Maine. There will probably be more by the time you read this. No sightings yet on some of the other sites, but they will have some available later in the day.

At 8:30am Eastern Time (6:30am Mountain), there will be an opening event webcast from NARA on their 1940 census site. At 9am, all of the images for the entire country should be available at that site. NARA is not creating an index, so you will need ED numbers to find any records. Also keep in mind that their servers may not be able to handle the traffic, so have a little patience and check on the other major sites that are also hosting images to see if they have uploaded the locations you need: FamilySearch.org, Archives.com, findmypast.co.uk, Ancestry.com, and WorldVitalRecords.com. The images will be free on all of the sites.

In addition, Ancestry.com has made available one billion records from 1930-1950 on their web site until April 10th. Some of the records in this collection include the 1930 census, city directories, obituaries, birth indexes, marriage details, naturalization records, and more.

And don’t forget to sign up to index. Our group, UJGS, still has only one member.