Census records from 1950 could solve some family mysteries

By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press

The first-ever publication of 1950 census records promises to solve some family mysteries for amateur genealogists and family historians. The National Archives and Records Administration on Friday released digitized individual records on 151 million people from the census. For privacy reasons, records identifying people by name can’t be made public until 72 years after they are gathered during the once-a-decade U.S. head count. The digitized records have information about household members’ names, race, sex, age, address, occupations, hours worked in the previous week, salaries, education levels, marital status, where they were born, as well as where their parents were born.