Searching the 1940 Census

     Do you remember the joys of searching for your ancestors in a microfilm census roll?  Using soundex to try to locate the correct roll of microfilm?  Were you overjoyed when internet websites such as FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com provided indexes to the censuses with links to census images?  Seems like we are right back where we started except we don't have to go to the library or LDS center to get the microfilm.
     For those who started researching their family tree after the FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com, now you get a taste of the hunt to find that ancestor which to me is the thrill of doing genealogy in the first place.
     I realized lately that as more and more information is available online that I am not as excited when I find something new about a family member.  To me, it is more exciting to dig through tons of books to find one bit of information.  I guess you could say I like the thrill of the hunt!
     So here I am searching page by page through the 1940 census searching for my cousin's parents in hopes that I can post an image up at our family reunion in July.  I do see where indexes are vital tools when looking at large towns or cities.  But where some of my family is from small rural communities, it is neat to scroll through the census pages and read the names.  Some of the names are familiar as distant relatives or as people my father has told me stories about over the years.
     Many of the names common in the small communities start me wondering are they related. Then I am off on a tangent trying to determine if they are related.
     Time to get back on course as I search for a great or grand uncle, John Thompson, in a larger community.  I know where he lived in 1930 so I tried the "One Step Work of Stephen Morse and Joel Weintraub".  My first go round I apparently put in too much information. After searching those two districts, I decided to give one step another try.  While I like the search, it didn't really feel like going through 10 districts of over 50 pages each.  The site provided two more districts.
     I first scan each district looking for the street that they lived on in 1930.  When that theory didn't pan out, I decided two scan each district page by page.  Even if I didn't find thin, I would know he was not in these four districts. After scrolling page after page, the name of my great uncle John did not appear.
     Time to look at my family information... where might he be?  When my great grandfather Thompson died, John was listed in the newspaper obituary as living in Alton, Illinois.  When his sister (my grandmother) died 16 years after her father, Uncle John was listed as living in Fosterburg.  My cousin live on the family land in Fosterburg that I remember traveling to as a child for visits.  So I decided to check Fosterburg.

     I tried to select Fosterburg from the standard browse list on Ancestry but it wasn't there. It was not listed  as a "populated place".  I did a google search for "fosterburg il township 1940 ed" (ed for Enumeration District).  In the list of search results was "1940 Census Enumeration District descriptions" on the National Archives website at research.archives.gov.  There was a list of enumeration districts for Madison Co, IL.  When I clicked this result, I was taken to an image of a typewritten list of enumeration districts.  The sixth entry down read Fosterburg township with the burg blacked out.  Beneath it read, "show separately Fosterburg (unincorporated)."
     I went back to Ancestry.com 1940 browse feather and changed the populated place to "Foster".  it provided me only one enumeration district.  I clicked on the selection.  And the fates smiled on me... or maybe just my uncle and his wife.  because there at the top of the first page was Uncle John, his wife Pearl, and their daughter, Norma Jean.

     While this search probably took me hours longer since the census is not fully indexed.  I must say I found the search much more thrilling in the end!