Aunt Elsie in North Carolina

Dick spent so much time working on the index to the 1940 U.S. census that he is quite comfortable working with it. He remembers his Aunt Elsie and her husband Art Makk visiting when they moved from North Carolina to Arizona. It seemed likely they lived in North Carolina at the time of the 1940 census. He found them in Guilford County in the piedmont city of Greensboro.

Art & Elsie after their move to Arizona

Arthur J. Makk gave his occupation as sign painter which is what he did, but in reality he was an artist designing signs. Both Art and Elsie are listed with a birthplace of Ohio. Elsie Elizabeth Hoffman was apparently born in Brooklyn, Ohio, even though her parents lived in Tennessee. Her mother must have stayed with her cousin Elizabeth Hückmann for the birth of her first child 4 April 1901. There is no Cuyahoga County record of the birth, but family records seem to be reliable.

Art is the first family member we have found who was also recorded in the supplemental questions at the bottom of the page. Since Elsie's line is marked with the circled x, she gave the information to the enumerator. She did not give accurate birthplaces for Art and his parents. His 1930 census entry when he was living with his mother showed both of them born in "Hungary." If you click on the image below you'll be able to read all the information on the Makk household.

This is what the entire page looks like:

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1940 U. S. Census, Guilford County, North Carolina, population schedule, Morehead Township, Greensboro, enumeration district (ED) 41-48, sheet 14B, dwelling 243, Arthur J. Makk household; digital images, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 5 September 2012), NARA digital publication T627, roll 2920.

1940: Hoffman’s Derinda Farm in the U.S. Census

The 1940 U.S. census was released to the public on April 2^nd. There still isn’t a complete index to it, but rural areas like Derinda Township in Jo Daviess County, Illinois, have a small number of pages that are easy to read through. The Hoffman farm family was counted on 12 April 1940. The household begins on the third sheet and continues onto the fourth.[i] The pages list many familiar names: Wurster, Endriss, Teichler, Dittmar, Krug, and Klopf.

Youngest in the family, John Hoffman (age 60) was the primary force in the family and was listed as head of household and person supplying the information. Next is oldest brother Henry (66) who only is listed as a laborer while William (64) is a brother and Minnie (62) is a sister and housekeeper. All were born in Illinois and lived in the same house five years earlier in 1935. The farm is reported with a value of only $1000 (perhaps that is just the house?) All reported fifth as the highest grade completed in school. None of them were on one of the two lines in each page for which supplemental questions were asked. Click on the image to see a larger version of some of the information.

Combined parts of the two census pages, left side

Missing from the family are brothers Charles and Fred. Fred died in 1934 and Charles had for many years lived in Rockford, Illinois. He will be easier to find in the 1940 census once the index for Illinois is completed.

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[i] 1940 U. S. Census, Jo Daviess County, Illinois, population schedule, Derinda Township, enumeration district (ED) 43-5, sheets 2A-B, dwelling 28, John Hoffman household; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 May 2012).