Finding My Parents in the 1950 U.S. Census

 Finding My Parents in the 1950 U.S. Census

 

After 72 years, the 1950 U.S. Census was released to the public on 1 April 2022. Like many family historians and genealogists, I went to the National Archives site to search for my parents in the 1950 census. The NARA web site has a very primitive search engine that was generated by an AI, but I was able to narrow the search to Stamford, Fairfield County, Connecticut. I did a search for my father's name, Eugene Major.  Didn't find him, but I did find my grandparents (my dad's father was also Eugene). There they were living at 127 Lockwood Avenue in Stamford. We had lived there growing up as it was my grandparent's house, so I thought I'd find them at that address. Nope. My Aunt and Uncle (my father's sister) were living there, but not my parents.  Ok, so where were they?

I looked at the Enumeration District maps at Ancestry.com at https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/district-map/62308 . I found Lockwood Avenue at ED 13-81, but didn't know where to look for my parents.

I know! The U.S. City Directory database on Ancestry! They had the 1950 Stamford City Directory and there were my parents, Eugene and Connie Major. They were living at 3 Dedonato Street on page 659 (image 655). My grandparents, Eugene and Ann Major were at 127 Lockwood Avenue, as expected.

Now I had a street address! I just need to go and find what Enumeration District that was in and then search the 1950 census again.  How to do that?  I remembered that the Steve Morse web site has some great census finding tool, including the 1950 Unified Census Finding Tool that will let me find a street by Enumeration District. Great. I went to the site, found the Stamford, Fairfield County, Connecticut listings, which gave me the EDs and all the streets in that ED. I went through each one to find Dedonato Street. It wasn't there!  No Dedonato Street. Didn't know where it was, so couldn't find a crossing street that might have been close. Now what? I looked at Google Earth, but no Dedonato Street. Maybe it was removed many years ago as part of some urban planning project.

I went back to Ancestry's ED maps for Stamford and thought that I could just move around the map to find Dedonato Street. After a few minutes of fruitless searching, I noticed an area marked separately on the map - "Veteran's Temporary Housing." Enumeration District 13-88. I suddenly recalled my dad telling me that they lived in the "Quonset Huts" after WW2 and I recall he even showed me where they were. I was young then, but I know the area he showed me was built up and those houses were gone.

 

 

                                            Veteran's Temporary Housing, ED 13-88, Stamford, CT (aka the "Quonset Huts")
 

Back to the NARA 1950 census and started looking at each page in ED 13-88. There they were and here they are:

If I didn't recall that my dad had told me they had lived in the Quonset huts, I would have had to wait till someone indexed the Stamford 1950 census before I could find them!

A typical post-WW2 Quonset hut (from: https://www.theloopnewspaper.com/story/2018/07/21/community/if-youve-never-lived-in-a-quonset-hut/4609.html)