by Brenna Corbit, Technical Services Librarian
Recently, I was searching for a James W. Graul in the Reading, Pa. 1930 U.S. Census. He was living with his son Charles whose occupation I couldn’t make out. In the following column, I noticed a cryptic code 827V. According to a directory of occupational codes for that census year, this alpha-numeric code represented “Musicians and teachers of music.” Only then could I make out that the illegible writing stated “musician.”
I was able to make this clarification because of Stephen Morse’s incredible collection of genealogical research aids. I have already extolled Morse’s website for finding census enumeration districts, and so today I would like to introduce to you “Deciphering Codes Appended to 1910 to 1950 Census in One Step!”
Too often, many enumerators had sloppy handwriting, ink from pens may have smudged the forms, or the records may have been damaged. In these cases, the numeric codes can be quite helpful in piecing together your ancestors’ stories. I will explain this simple “One Step” for each decade, except for the 1950 census which will not be released until April 2022.
1910—This One Step is not too helpful since Morse only supplies us with a PDF of the original list of codes used by enumerators. You can look up alphabetically by occupation, but not by codes in numerical order. I assume Morse is still in the process of generating this One Step for 1910. To make matters worse, the occupational codes on the census forms are written in columns 29 – 32, which are designated for farm schedules, veteran statuses, and disabilities questions. That’s the government for you! Until Stephen Morse finishes this one, it will be a bit of a struggle to use.
1920—Finally, you can look up by number, and this time the codes are written in the right hand margin of the census. Bear in mind, digital images of the originals suffer some edge deterioration. So let’s see how this works. I find a Martha Dee living in Manhattan whose occupation is not fully legible. Looking up the occupational code 837 in Morse’s One Step, I find the description of “chemists, ssayers, and metallurgist.” This does not seem to match what is written because in the first column I can make out one of the words, “assistant,” and in the second column l can make out “department store.” Thus, coupled with what I find in the One Step, Martha’s occupation must be an assistant to a chemist, or what we would now call a pharmacist.
I was able to make this clarification because of Stephen Morse’s incredible collection of genealogical research aids. I have already extolled Morse’s website for finding census enumeration districts, and so today I would like to introduce to you “Deciphering Codes Appended to 1910 to 1950 Census in One Step!”
Too often, many enumerators had sloppy handwriting, ink from pens may have smudged the forms, or the records may have been damaged. In these cases, the numeric codes can be quite helpful in piecing together your ancestors’ stories. I will explain this simple “One Step” for each decade, except for the 1950 census which will not be released until April 2022.
1910—This One Step is not too helpful since Morse only supplies us with a PDF of the original list of codes used by enumerators. You can look up alphabetically by occupation, but not by codes in numerical order. I assume Morse is still in the process of generating this One Step for 1910. To make matters worse, the occupational codes on the census forms are written in columns 29 – 32, which are designated for farm schedules, veteran statuses, and disabilities questions. That’s the government for you! Until Stephen Morse finishes this one, it will be a bit of a struggle to use.
1920—Finally, you can look up by number, and this time the codes are written in the right hand margin of the census. Bear in mind, digital images of the originals suffer some edge deterioration. So let’s see how this works. I find a Martha Dee living in Manhattan whose occupation is not fully legible. Looking up the occupational code 837 in Morse’s One Step, I find the description of “chemists, ssayers, and metallurgist.” This does not seem to match what is written because in the first column I can make out one of the words, “assistant,” and in the second column l can make out “department store.” Thus, coupled with what I find in the One Step, Martha’s occupation must be an assistant to a chemist, or what we would now call a pharmacist.
1930—This time, there is a designated column in the census for occupational codes—letter D after #26. So let us take a look at another example. I found a Daniel Calahan in Providence, Rhode Island whose occupation is a “helper,” but the industry is illegible due to an enumerator’s correction. In the One Step I find that 7889 is a “laborer” in “Automobile agency or accessories store; Automobile filling station; Automobile service station (filling station).” Thus the indecipherable wordcould be “auto.” I just want to point out that the code descriptions for this census year are quite lengthy, which can complicate matters.
1940—For this census, the occupational codes appear in column F following #30. For the last example, we will look at Lewis Williams working as a “laborer” in Atlanta, Georgia. I can make out part of the industry as “project [?] park.” Looking up the code 988V92, I find the description “Laborers (not elsewhere classified); Construction; Wage or salary worker in Government work (GW).” Therefore Lewis is working on some kind of government job project in a public park. Apparently, Ancestry.com has been indexing occupations with Optical Character Recognition, but as I have said before, OCR is not always reliable. Returning to James W. Graul, the 1910 OCR reading of his occupation is wrong. His one son is listed as working in a “rolling mill,” which is legible, but OCR lists James as the same occupation—the enumerator clearly wrote “laborer” at “odd jobs.” Therefore, if you cannot read the text, don’t always rely on OCR. Instead, rely upon Stephen Morse’s “Deciphering Codes Appended to 1910 to 1950 Census in One Step!”
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