Project 1950: Street List Transcriptions

Join us in helping researchers find people by location when the 1950 U.S. Census becomes public on April 1, 2022.

Sept 30, 2014

Our Goal ............................................................................................................................................................................... 3

So Let’s Get Started!! ........................................................................................................................................................ 3

Background ......................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Format of an ED .................................................................................................................................................................. 4

One-Step Census ED Utilities ......................................................................................................................................... 4

Your Task ............................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Selecting Urban Areas to Transcribe ............................................................................................................................ 4

Getting Materials for Your Urban Area ......................................................................................................................... 5

Entry Tools ........................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Entry Tool 1: Standard Tool ............................................................................................................................................ 6

Backing Up Your Work (Standard Entry Tool Only) ..................................................................................................... 6

Entry Tool 2: Checklist Tool ............................................................................................................................................ 7

Situation 1. EDs with Few Blocks .................................................................................................................................. 8

Situation 2. ED with a Larger Number of Blocks ...................................................................................................... 9

Situation 3: EDs Beyond 1940 Area Boundaries .................................................................................................... 11

Editing EDs After You Submit Them ........................................................................................................................... 11

Additional Information about the Entry Tools .......................................................................................................... 11

ED Descriptions ................................................................................................................................................................ 12

Transcribing the Data...................................................................................................................................................... 13

Seeded ED Boundaries that are not Streets ............................................................................................................. 13

Unknowns .......................................................................................................................................................................... 13

Numbered Streets ............................................................................................................................................................ 14

Lettered Streets ................................................................................................................................................................ 15

Institutions, Apts, Hotels, Etc. and their Street Boundaries ................................................................................. 15

Variations in Street Names ............................................................................................................................................ 16

Large Cities, Split Blocks ............................................................................................................................................... 16

Proofing .............................................................................................................................................................................. 17

YAHOO Groups ................................................................................................................................................................. 17

Joining the Project ........................................................................................................................................................... 18

Project 1950: Street List Transcriptions

Our Goal

To produce data sets so that a researcher having an address in a community of over 5,000 in 1950 will be able to determine the census district number that contains that address. Knowing the district number will allow him to access the corresponding census page when the census opens to the public in 2022 (the census will not have a name index initially). You will be given a community to transcribe. For example, if you were working on Eureka, California and district number 12-17 (see image), you would come up with the following list of streets: J through O streets, and 7th through 15th streets. We will use those street names to convert addresses to district numbers.

So Let’s Get Started!!

This document contains everything you need to know about the project and what your task will be. As such, it is very detailed. Don't let that scare you off. It may sound confusing, but it's very simple to understand once you start doing it. Ask questions if unsure of any instructions on these pages. In addition, once you start transcribing, Joel Weintraub (census1950@cox.net) will be available to help resolve your problems.

Background

There are two ways to search in the U.S. census – by name and by address or location. Searching by name is the easier way to go, but it is not always possible. For one thing, the name might have been so poorly written that it was transcribed incorrectly when a name index was created. For another, there might not be a name index. We expect that when the 1950 census becomes public on April 1, 2022, there won’t be a name index available (although groups will begin producing such an index after the census opens).

That means that the only way the 1950 census can be searched initially is by address or location. However, the census is not organized by address or location. Rather it is organized by something called an Enumeration District (ED). If you don’t know the ED number, you cannot easily access the census. So we need some aid for converting addresses or locations to ED numbers.

That’s what this project is all about. We will be providing a free, web-based utility on the “One-Step” website that allows researchers to go from an address to an ED for most 1950 urban areas of 5,000 or more, with at least 5 EDs.

Format of an ED

An ED number is composed of a pair of numbers separated by a dash, such as “62-86”. We’ll refer to the portion before the dash as the ED prefix (62 in this case) and the portion after the dash as the ED suffix (86 in this case). The prefix usually denotes the county within the state. However many large cities of over 50,000 in population in 1950 were given their own prefix, independent of the prefix of the county in which the city is located. Note: the 1950 ED maps for the largest cities usually drop the prefix when displaying the ED number.

If an ED turned out to be too much for a single census taker to handle, it was divided up and given to more people. A CAPITAL letter for each subdivision was added at the end of the suffix when this occurred. For example, if ED 64-7 turned out to be too big, it was subdivided into ED 64-7A, 64-7B, etc. In such cases we ignored the original ED and treated each of the subdivided EDs as independent EDs for this project. Note: split EDs don’t show on the 1950 ED maps, only the original ED boundary is shown.

One-Step Census ED Utilities

If you go to the One-Step website and look in the U.S. Census section, you’ll see a tool called the Unified 1880-1940 Census ED Finder. That tool allows you to enter an address for a number of urban areas and it will tell you which ED that address is located in. It covers the census years from1880 to 1940. The current project is going to extend that tool to 1950.

We have already produced, with the help of 27 volunteers, text descriptions for all 233,800+ 1950 EDs, and that information will eventually be included in the free Unified tool mentioned above (but is currently available on two ED-definition-specific tools in the census section). These definitions will be useful in finding EDs for smaller urban communities, and for all rural areas. We will continue to add unincorporated communities to these definitions from 1950 ED county maps as they become available.

Your Task

Now that we have the tools to find the ED of rural communities or small urban areas, we are ready to start tackling larger urban areas. That's where you come in.

You will be assigned a city, town, or village. You will be working with 1950 ED maps or other maps of your assigned area and sometimes ED descriptions (text transcriptions and if needed ED definition scans). These maps should show all the streets within the community and their names. Your job is to record those street names for each ED. We will provide two different online data-entry tools to aid in the transcription process.

Selecting Urban Areas to Transcribe

We have a tool called Picking a 1950 City in One Step where you can request up to four urban areas to work with. The cities, towns, and villages on the list include all urban areas with about 5,000 or more inhabitants and at least 5 EDs. After you submit your request, we will get an automatic notice of your interest. Joel Weintraub will check to see if we have the necessary online 1950 ED map for your areas, and then get back to you as soon as possible about how to proceed. He will tell you the 1950

population of the community, and whether this was one of the areas we did in 1940, which will determine which entry tool you will use (discussed later), and the city code and ED number of the first district in that community. If we don’t have the ED map or other appropriate map resources for your choices at this time, we will ask you if you want to reserve the city until such resources become available. We expect to eventually have 1950 ED maps for all of our targeted areas. The largest cities might be split among multiple volunteers.

Getting Materials for Your Urban Area

We will provide you with, or direct you to, all the resources needed to carry out this project. NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) is slowly putting online the 1950 ED maps, scanned in color and high resolution. To find the ED map for your choices (or to see if they have been put online) go to the OPA NARA site and enter in the Search box “1950 Census Map” and your urban area name. We also have the Census Bureau's 1950 “block maps” for the largest 200 plus cities in the U.S., and that will be available to volunteers. You may need to use a modern map of your area to resolve street names that are hard to read or don’t show on the 1950 maps.

BURBANK shows the 1950 ED map for Burbank, California, a moderately large city of 78,577 at that time (over double what it was in 1940!). We will use Burbank to illustrate some of the protocols used in this project, so don’t skip this example. We will also use Eureka, California. It's best if you can have at least two open windows while you are doing the transcription -- one for the ED map image and one for the entry tool. Note: The Burbank map example is a large file of over 13 mb in size that comes from the NARA site. Expect all ED map files in 1950 to be large. If you are having trouble downloading it, here’s a smaller version of the Burbank map: BURBANK RESIZED.

NARA has 38 microfilms containing ED descriptions for the 1950 census. We have scanned copies of those films, indexed them to the large cities and to all counties, and placed the index and scans at 1940/1950 ED Descriptions. With the help of 27 volunteers, we have transcribed those film descriptions to text files. You can find those 233,800+ text descriptions which show the boundary definitions of the EDs of your urban areas at 1880-1950 ED Definitions.

Entry Tools

You will have a choice between two different entry tools for entering the street names within specific EDs. Let’s call the tools the "Standard Tool" and the "Checklist Tool." Hint: It would be helpful if your computer setup has multiple monitors (or add a laptop next to your monitor); you will be dealing with the online entry tool, a window with the ED map or another map, and if your maps are hard to read, a modern map program like Google maps within a third window. For smaller cities, you might be able to print out your ED map and use it, instead of using your monitor. Please read through the instructions for both tools as there is information in both that will help you understand our procedures.

DO NOT USE BOTH ENTRY TOOLS FOR YOUR CITY. ONCE YOU DECIDE WHICH TOOL YOU WANT TO USE, YOU MUST STICK WITH THAT TOOL. If you change your mind, you will not be able to transfer your work from one entry tool to the other but will need to start over again.

Below we will present several strategies for using the various entry tools. These are the strategies that we think are optimal and simplify the task of data entry. But each person is unique, and what we find optimal might not be optimal for you. So feel free to develop your own strategy using the entry tools, as long as it results in a correct list of all the streets in your ED.

Entry Tool 1: Standard Tool The Standard Tool was the only entry tool we had when we did street lists for our 1940 urban areas. It was used successfully to record street lists for over 1200 urban areas. We have updated it for the 1950 project and it will now “Seed” the ED you are working on with the 1950 boundary streets taken from our transcriptions. You will see on the Standard Tool a running list of street names including those entered in previous EDs, and can alphabetize the list of names to check (and resolve) street name variations. Here’s where you can see this tool: http://stevemorse.org/census/edtemplate.html We anticipate the Standard Tool will be used for smaller cities under 25,000 in population that we didn’t transcribe in 1940. However, you can use the Standard Tool for any city in 1950. Instructions for the Standard Tool are at: http://stevemorse.org/census/edtemplatehelp.htm. You start by picking your city, and a volunteer name, and then entering the ED suffix (at the bottom of the form) for a new ED. You then press the "Seed" button to automatically enter the 1950 boundary streets from our earlier transcriptions. After that you will manually type all other street names (one per entry) and other internal features that were not “seeded”. You will repeat this process for each ED in your urban area. The seeded names come from the transcriptions we did off of the films that showed the 1950 ED definitions. The seeded street names appear in the order they would be encountered if traversing the ED boundary in a clockwise order starting from the north. We assume that the ED map trumps the ED film definitions of the EDs. Delete incorrect seeded names and replace them with the boundary name found on your map. Don’t skip this step, as we are sure you will find situations where you need to replace the seeded names because of typos, mistyped definitions, etc. If you have an ED that has City Limits on one of its boundaries or other political line, make sure you transcribe any street name that is UNDER the boundary line. If it’s ambiguous whether the street is at the boundary or just outside of it, record it anyway. If you can’t find the seeded street on your map, include it anyway on your street list. Record the street names in a consistent manner; that is, do the horizontal streets from top to bottom, and the vertical streets from right to left, each time you transcribe an ED.

Let’s use here one ED (62-86) from Burbank (ED 62-86 MAP). 62-86 ENTRY shows you what the Standard tool looks like for Burbank’s ED 62-86 with the boundary features already “seeded”. You would still have to manually add five more street names to complete all the streets that 62-86 contained.

Backing Up Your Work (Standard Entry Tool Only)

The Standard data-entry tool provides you with the ability to save your work on our server. We recommend that you try entering some test values, saving them, and making sure that you can retrieve them. Once you are sure that is working, you can then enter and save your real values. The Checklist tool does NOT have a way for you to back up your work.

To enter such test values, you will want to use a different volunteer name, otherwise you will over-write any real values that you might have previously saved. We suggest that your testing name be your real name with the word "testing" added (e.g. SteveMorseTesting) so that we can recognize those test values when we see them on the server and not think they are real values.

We should mention that the data-entry tool has some safeguards to prevent you from losing your data. First, whenever you do a save, you are asked to confirm that you really want to save. That

prevents you from losing previously-saved values if for some reason the values you currently have on your screen are all bogus.

Second, whenever you attempt to leave the data-entry tool (either by loading in another webpage or by closing the browser window completely) and you have unsaved values, you will get a message asking if you want to do a save. That prevents you from forgetting to save values that you really meant to save.

Finally, here' a way of providing a backup. When you do a save, you are presented with a screen showing what data has been saved. The data is not in the same format that you entered it, but you will be able to recognize your values in that data. Copy and paste the contents of that screen into a text file and keep that on your computer. If at some later time you discover that your file on the server has been destroyed, we can re-create your server file for you if you send us the latest text file you saved on your computer.

And in the worst case, if you destroy your data and you have not have not made a backup as just described, we might be able to fetch a previous copy of your data from the server backups. There is no assurance that the server backup will be available, but is certainly something we would try to recover for you if all else fails.

Entry Tool 2: Checklist Tool Our second tool is the Checklist Tool. We have spent a great deal of time on this tool, but if you see something that doesn’t make sense or that doesn’t work as expected, then let us know. This tool provides a way of using the 1940 (yes, 1940) street lists to help with the 1950 transcriptions. Over 1200 urban areas had such street lists produced during our 1940 projects, and that includes all of the major population areas. Having the 1940 street names reduces the need to type in their names for the 1950 entry form, and also cuts down on spelling errors. Furthermore, if you knew the anticipated streets in an area, it makes it easier to read the ED map or other map resources. Remember, to use this tool to its fullest capability, we must have produced street lists for your assigned area during our 1940 project. When you ask for a community to transcribe, Joel will tell you if that area was done in 1940. The Checklist Tool could be used for areas not done in 1940, but the Standard Tool should be your choice in that situation.

The Checklist Tool is at http://stevemorse.org/census/seed1950a.php. Let’s look in detail what this tool does and why it works. We will use the Eureka, California ED 12-17 that we started this manual with, and that map figure is repeated on the next page. Please go to the online Checklist utility and see if you can follow along with our instructions. Don't worry about creating entries on the site for this example -- we will eventually delete it realizing it was just a test.

First, you will enter the city code that you will get (euca is Eureka California), and the prefix number for that city (12), the first suffix number you are working on (17 in our example), and your initials or other identifying code (line not shown on the right figure). You would change the suffix number on the main entry page of this tool as you work through the ED numbers of your area. The Checklist Tool works on individual EDs, and then we will splice them together at the end to produce the complete community file. . Press “Continue” to get to the entry page. If you have forgotten to enter one of the required lines, a popup warning will tell you to enter the missing information.

If you had previously entered that ED #, after you pressed “Continue” a popup would inform you of that fact. Another popup window will show you if you any previous EDs that you entered for this city. After you dismiss these pop-up windows (by pressing OK), you will be directed to the main entry screen.

When you get to the main entry page, you will notice that the form is divided into several street ENTRY SECTIONS. There are three buttons at the top and bottom of the entry page (repeated for convenience): SEED; RESET STREETS; and RESET STREETS & EDs.

Situation 1. EDs with Few Blocks

We anticipate you will use a number of capabilities of the Checklist tool for your assigned community. You may use one strategy for EDs with small numbers of blocks, and another strategy for EDs with large numbers of blocks. First let’s look at EDs with just a few blocks. For demonstration purposes, let’s assume Eureka’s 12-17 only has a few blocks (it actually has 30).

If you did nothing after you entered the ED number (and make sure you clear the Entry Sections by pressing the Reset Streets & EDs button) except press the Seed button, you would be taken to a new screen and you would see your ED’s boundary streets from 1950 as an (unchecked) checklist of street names in the order they would be encountered if traversing the ED boundary in a clockwise order starting from the north. You would also see a blank box into which you can type any remaining internal streets names (one street name pre line) as well as any other features of your ED. See the result screen to the right. You can then “Check All” the boxes (if they agree with your ED map boundary names for this ED), and then add any additional streets (9 in this case), one per line in the box provided, and then press “Submit” to complete the ED transcription for that particular ED. You will see a confirming screen that your information has been received and recorded. Remember to check to see that the seeded street names are what your map shows, and if they differ in spelling, then don’t check them off but put the correct name in the additional streets blank box. If you can’t find the seeded street on your map, include it anyway on your street list. Clicking on a checklist box will insert or remove the check mark in the box.

We recommend you use this set of steps for any EDs you encounter that have only a few blocks. What denotes “a few blocks” in the ED? That’s to be determined by actual use, but EDs with up to five or six blocks in size probably fall within this situation of using the “Seed” button after entering the ED number (and making sure the Entry Sections are devoid of data). The point is to use a strategy that is the most efficient and reduces the time needed to do an ED. Often you will see a number of these smaller EDs clustered in one area of your map, and the technique above will transcribe them quickly. (You could use this procedure on urban areas we did not do in 1940, but we recommend the Standard Tool for those communities) Also, if your map is unreadable for the ED you are working on, it might be wise to use this procedure so at least you will see the boundary street names and not have to type those in, and then use a modern map and your ED map to fill in the remaining street names if possible.

Note: It's easy to go back to the entry screen for the next ED to be transcribed in the sequence. There are two ways to do that, depending on how you have configured your browser. If your browser is configured so that new screens open in separate tabs (rather than in separate browser windows), you simply click on the original tab and continue transcribing. If your browser is configured to open new screens in separate browser windows, use alt-tab to switch between browser windows. You should delete unused tabs and unused windows, so as to prevent things from becoming unmanageable. If you were doing a sequence of these smaller EDs, then each time you come back to the main entry page, you would change the suffix number to the ED suffix you want to work on next. You would then proceed with the new ED’s transcription (there shouldn’t be any information in the Entry Sections).

Situation 2. ED with a Larger Number of Blocks

Obviously Eureka’s 12-17 is not composed of a few blocks. So for such situations we have devised a way of providing you a checklist of ALL anticipated street names within the ED that you are working on. You can thank the 125 volunteers who provided the 1940 street names for giving you the means to achieve a comprehensive 1950 checklist.

For ED 12-17, we will find its corresponding1940 ED number(s) and its 1940 street names. Let’s assume we start fresh with the entry page blank; nothing in any of the three Entry Sections. Then, after entering the ED information on the top of the entry page, look at the first Entry Section. Here we are going to select the names of an intersection within the 1950 ED from your map (8th and K shown by the star); if that’s not possible we will use one of the corners to generate the street names. Our intersection is on the far NW part of this ED. So for the first Entry Section we will enter 8th for “Street 1” and K St for “Street 2”.

You select those two streets from the Street 1 and Street 2 dropdown lists. The dropdown list of names comes from street names we transcribed for our 1940 project. After you select 8th for Street 1, you will see four ED numbers in the box called 1940 EDs. (Note: If there was a leftover 1940 ED # from your previous ED work, entering a street name would update the 1940 ED number(s)) The street 8th passes through all four of those 1940 EDs. Our goal is to get down to a single ED number, if possible, in the 1940 ED box. So next we choose K St from Street 2’s dropdown list. You will notice that the number of street name choices for Street 2 is less than the number of choices for Street 1. That’s because we know which streets appeared with 8th in Eureka’s 1940 EDs and excluded all the others from the choice in Street 2. Hint: once a dropdown box is opened, if you type the first few letters of your targeted street name, the list will move to the first street name beginning with those letters. You can now see, after entering 8th and K St, that there is only one 1940 ED number. The 1940 ED number IS NOT IMPORTANT. What is important is we have narrowed down the 1940 ED that contains (or partly contains) your 1950 ED.

Our goal was to get down to as few EDs as possible, so we certainly succeeded. If after the two internal entry streets we still had multiple 1940 ED numbers (an unusual situation), we would enter additional streets from your 1950 ED, preferably on the same block as your initial intersection, to try to get down to a single 1940 ED number. (Hint: some other strategies to find 1950 streets that will easily give a corresponding 1940 ED are to use a unique short street within your ED, or use any internal N/S and closeby E/W street.)

Once we are down to a single ED (or just a few) we now press either Seed button and that takes us to the next screen that provides a Checklist of all the streets in our resultant 1940 ED along with the boundary streets taken from our 1950 ED boundary transcription. These streets will appear in one alphabetized list. The streets that we had selected will have checkmarks next to them and we then add checkmarks to any of the others that are in our 1950 ED (including the 1950 boundary streets), as determined by the 1950 ED map. Streets not on the Checklist or not matching the exact spelling on the Checklist should be typed in the additional street name box that is provided. Record the street names from your map in a consistent manner; that is, do the horizontal streets from top to bottom, and the vertical streets from right to left, each time you transcribe an ED. Be very careful when you check a box and make sure it is the right one. Also make sure you have all the street names; some may be hiding under or near the boundary lines used in your community, e.g. Town and City Limits and Precinct and Ward Lines. When in doubt about adding a street name that is potentially within your ED… add it. We would rather make errors of commission than errors of omission.

If you are following this example, you should note that the Checklist figure shown before has more than 8th and K St checked off. That’s because we used two of the Entry Sections. Here’s the reason. The area of the 1950 EDs are usually much smaller than the corresponding 1940 EDs and they usually are found within an area of a single 1940 ED. We anticipate this will be the norm and have yet to see a 1950 ED overlap two or more 1940 EDs. Thus we would need only one of the three Entry Sections. However, what would happen if there was overlap? That is, your 1950 ED overlaps two or more 1940 ones. If you relied on only one Entry Section to generate the Checklist for an overlapping ED, it would not include those streets that are in the 1940 ED(s) that was not found. So we decided to give you a chance of adding a second or third area from your ED. Looking at our Eureka 12-17 example, we choose from the opposite corner of our first example, the intersection of 13th and M St (on the SE part of the ED shown on the map figure with a small triangle) and entered those streets into the second Entry Section. If you do that, you will find you will get the same 1940 ED number, indicating that we probably are still within only a single 1940 ED area. So when we then press the Submit button after using two of the Entry Sections, all four of the street entries we picked were shown checked off. If the second entry produced a different ED number, the entry tool would have included all streets from both of the 1940 EDs (with duplicates eliminated). See if you can repeat these instructions on the website to get a checklist with four streets checked off.

You are going to have to learn with a little experimentation for each of your assignments under what situations you will use the Seed button directly, or use one or more of the Entry Sections. For 1950 EDs with a large number of blocks, even with the multiple sections used, you still might miss some overlapped EDs. However the more groupings that you have and the more spread out they are in different parts of the 1950 ED, the better chance you have of not missing any 1940 EDs. In any case,

you have the opportunity of adding street names not on the checklist by typing them into the blank entry box.

After you press the Submit button, you can easily go back to the original entry screen for the next ED. The procedure for doing so is the same procedure described in the last paragraph of situation 1. Once back at the original entry screen, you will be able to change the suffix number so that you can start working on another ED.

Situation 3: EDs Beyond 1940 Area Boundaries

Suppose you can’t find most if not all of your 1950 street names on the 1940 street name dropdown list. In this case, your community has probably expanded in area since 1940 and you are outside of the 1940 city limits. So, make sure no street names are selected (use the reset button for streets & EDs), and press the “seed” button. This will take you to the next screen which only shows a blank box and a checklist of the 1950 ED boundary streets in their transcribed sequence. Check off the boundary streets, and in the blank box, type in the internal street names (one per line) for that ED. You would then press the submit button and then return to the initial entry screen per our previous instructions. (Thus this is similar to Situation 1 that we discussed previously)

Editing EDs After You Submit Them

You can always add a street name or correct an entry after you have submitted your ED. Just enter the ED # that you want to correct, and make sure that there aren’t any streets selected or 1940 ED numbers in the boxes on the form (press the Reset Streets & EDs button). Then press the Seed button. The street list which appears will show your earlier work, and you can now edit it. Then resubmit the page, and it will replace the original material on the One Step site.

Additional Information about the Entry Tools

1. The hints above come from Joel’s work on the City of Los Angeles based on the 1950 ED map. One problem with the ED map is that the street names were often a distance away from where that street appeared within the ED. Thus to see the street name, the map had to be moved to find the name, a time consuming task. Joel decided to do two things to solve this problem.

First, he put his tablet/laptop with a current map program next to the computer monitor, and could see the street names in the area easily. For Los Angeles, it appeared the names were the same today as in 1950.

Second, although it took a little more time, for those EDs that he used the street Entry Sections, he made the name entry a two-step process. In step 1 he just entered the suffix number and pressed the seed button, with no streets selected in the Entry Sections. This gave him a list of the boundary streets of the ED, which he checked off and submitted. Step 2 was to go back to the entry tool, keeping the same suffix number, and in the Entry Section he selected street names to get down to a single 1940 ED. He then again pressed the seed button. What appeared was the checklist in alphabetical order of both the 1940 possible street names (with those selected checked off), and the 1950 boundary street names already checked off from the first entry step. Now it was a simple matter to add the additional internal streets for the ED, and then resubmit the ED.

2. After you enter an ED number into either entry tool and press the Seed button, you might not get any boundary streets. There could be several reasons for this. You might have entered an ED suffix

higher than the highest ED suffix for the community (i.e. you are now outside of the city). Another possibility is that your ED has been split into parts, each with the original ED # and a capital letter added. Thus if your ED was 66-4, and entering 4 gave no boundary list, try 4A in the suffix box, and if that works, then for your next ED # use 4B, and so on until you again see a blank boundary list. Another possibility involves EDs that are Institutions; an ED that is entirely an Institution will not show any information/boundary streets.. You can always check the 1950 ED definitions or the actual 1950 definition scans to see what the ED number you are working on has in the way of splits, institutions, or other situations. Hint: It’s probably a good idea to first go through the ED definitions for your assignment, noting which ED #s are splits, or institutions, or a non-standard area information.

3. Let us warn you about a situation you WILL encounter. An assumption here is that the streets in our 1940 street list will be spelled the same as the corresponding street in the 1950 ED definitions. However we are human and make mistakes. You might see the same street appearing as two different checklist items with different spellings (one spelling from our 1940 street lists and one spelling four our 1950 boundary street names). When you see such a situation, only check off one of the street names. You may have to do further research to determine which is correct. Also you may see a street name duplicated on the Checklist; only check off one incidence of that street.

ED Descriptions

Before discussing how to transcribe, let's review the format of an ED description. The figure on the right shows part of a typical page from the online 1950 ED definition scans for Burbank’s ED 62-86. The first column on the left hand part of the page shows the 1950 ED number, namely 62-86. That’s followed by the description of the ED.

Compare the boundary description to our text transcription of this ED: Burbank (Los Angeles Co)^62-86^BURBANK CITY, (TRACT 390A) BOUNDED BY (N) CLARK AVE; (E) CALIFORNIA AVE; (S) VERDUGO AVE; (W) KENWOOD

We routinely ignored words and block numbers (if present) that we considered “noise” in the original definition. If there was a Ward number in the ED, we would have transcribed that. Now look at where the ED’s boundaries of 62-86 are shown on the original description scan. After the “Bounded by” you will see 4 lines on the scan, each with one (it can have more) street name or other boundary feature. The lines represent, in order, the North, East, South, and West boundary features of the ED. That is, it’s describing the outside of a polygon. When we transcribed the definition of this ED, we showed the compass heading of the boundary streets when possible by using (N), (E), (S), and (W). For the street index that you will be generating, the Seeding process did NOT include these compass headings or the words "bounded by” or Ward or Tract numbers, nor will we include it in the street lists. However, knowing how the ED boundary definitions are described may help you during your street list transcriptions. And although we used upper case for the ED definitions, you will use normal mixed-case notation for the streets that you transcribe.

On the Burbank 1950 ED map previously referenced, you should be able to see those same boundary names/features for the ED number in question (middle left of the map for 62-86). If there is a conflict between the map and the scan definitions, we go with the map information.

Transcribing the Data

You are now ready to use ONE of the data-entry tools and list each street name in each ED for the urban area that was assigned to you. The boundary features can be seen on ED text definitions we discussed earlier and from the ED map. For the Standard Entry Tool those boundary features can be “seeded” into the ED you are working on. (The Checklist tool, depending on how you use it, can also “seed” those boundary names)

So let’s look at some protocols we used and situations that you will certainly encounter.

Seeded ED Boundaries that are not Streets

You might see an ED boundary feature that is not a street. One example is a Railroad. We generally transcribed Railroad lines on our ED text definitions as just RR or Railways as RWY (and sometimes used RR for both entities) unless we saw two different Railroads within the same ED, and then we usually included an abbreviated name for each RR. Note: some states seem to use Railroads and Railways often as boundary features, such as Texas, and in those situations you should use full abbreviations for those RRs and RWYs. If the boundary is a river or creek, we use the full name. Even if the researcher doesn't search on that name, they still will be able to see that geographical feature within our list of names for each

You might see a political boundary such as Ward Line, Town Line, City Line, etc. (both words start with upper case) as a boundary on your ED definition. Since those boundaries may change, they may have little use for our researchers in the year 2022. We will however include these for historical purposes and for completeness of the ED definition, but we also want the underlying street name for those boundaries if available. On the ED map sometimes the boundary colored line obscures the underlying street name. MAKE SURE YOU ADD THE UNDERLYING STREET NAME to your index for that ED whenever possible.

Now, for the internal street names in your ED. Be consistent, transcribe them from the ED map top to bottom from the ED you are working on, then left to right, or some other consistent pattern so you approach this the same way for all EDs and not miss any street names.

Let’s look at some typical situations that you might face, and what to transcribe in those cases

Unknowns

You might see "Unknown" as a boundary name, and you might also want to use the term for your internal street names. It’s all right to transcribe unnamed streets as "Unknown". If you can figure out the name of unknowns (or illegibles), go for it, and add them to the transcription. Make a list of any that are on the ED boundary, so we can later go back and update our master file of the ED boundary definitions. A modern online mapping site might help with this process.

Street Modifiers and Abbreviations

A modifier can be a compass direction (North Jackson, East Jackson) or a street designation (Main Street, Main Avenue, Main Boulevard, Main Road). With the rules below, we tried to be as consistent as possible with our transcriptions, so people using our utilities would expect certain protocols for street names.

The ED descriptions on the original NARA films do NOT use the term "Street".... so that Perry Street shows as just Perry. We follow that same convention and do NOT put St after a "Street" name even it appears as such on your map. There are exceptions. If you have a street that is named East Street, West Street, North Street, South Street, or even New Street, Old Street, Railroad Street, B St.... it would be helpful here to enter East St, West St, etc. so that it's clear you haven't made an error and separated a compass modifier from a street name. Be aware of this so if your map shows North with no “St” after it, and it is the name of that street, than transcribe it as North St. (We will not abbreviate the compass words in these situations.)

We suggest standard abbreviations for Alley (Al), Avenue (Ave), Boulevard (Blvd), Court (Ct), Highway (Hwy), Lane (Ln), Parkway (Pkwy), Place (Pl), Road (Rd), North (N), South (S), etc.

It’s important to be CONSISTENT. If you enter "Main Ave" in some places, and "Main Av" in others, then “Main” will appear with BOTH names in the street drop-down list of the ED Finder tool on the One Step Site. And do not put a period after the abbreviation. The only abbreviations that should have periods are Saint (St.) and U.S..

We decided that streets with the same name but different modifiers should appear together in the street name list on the One Step site. In order to do that, we place any compass modifier AFTER rather than before the street name. So North 5th Avenue and East 34th Street should be entered as 5th Ave N and 34th E. Note that the compass modifier has been abbreviated to a single letter (with no period) and comes after the street name and street modifier (Ave, Pl, etc.).

You may encounter situations where what appears to be a compass modifier is really part of the street name, rather than showing a section of a street. For example, perhaps a city surrounds a lake and you have independent streets named West Lake Avenue and East Lake Avenue. It would be awkward to transcribe these as Lake Ave W and Lake Ave E. In this situation you'll probably feel strongly that the compass modifier should be first. So transcribe it that way, but you could also include the name with the modifier at the end. Remember, our goal is to be useful, not to be exact in terms of street names. So if you have a street name where you could put down two different variations of the name (West Lake Ave, Lake Ave W), then put both names down. However, if you do this, make sure that EVERY occurrence of this street shows BOTH names in every ED that it is found in. Otherwise the algorithm used by the One-Step ED finder will not work.

Numbered Streets

Some cities have streets like Fourth Avenue, Fifth Avenue, Sixth Street, etc. Transcribe these as 4th Ave, 5th Ave, and 6th even if it is common practice in your urban area of use letters rather than numbers. This will result in the street names being adjacent in the (alphabetized) street dropdown list of the resulting ED Finder, making it easier for the researchers to find such streets. However, if you have something like Two Mile Run, then transcribe it that way as its part of a formal name.

Lettered Streets

Some cities have streets like Avenue A, Avenue B, etc. Transcribe these just that way -- don't abbreviate to Ave A, Ave B. If you see a street on your map shown as Ave A, transcribe that as Avenue A. If you see, A Ave, then transcribe it exactly that way. We try to be consistent as much as possible with the formatting of street names.

Institutions, Apts, Hotels, Etc. and their Street Boundaries

If there is an institution (hospital, jail, orphanage) shown within an ED not covered by our ED definition transcription, by all means add that to your list. Treat the name as if it were a street name. Unless you have a detailed map from 1950, it is unlikely you will add many such items.

EDS THAT ARE ENTIRELY INSTITUTIONS WILL PRODUCE NO NAMES OR STREET NAMES WHEN THAT ED IS SEEDED. GET THE NAME OF THE INSTITUTION EITHER FROM THE ED MAP OR FROM THE ED DEFINITIONS.

WE WILL NOT TRANSCRIBE THE SPECIFIC ADDRESS OF APTS, HOTELS, AND INSTITUTIONS IF PRESENT. Thus if “233 Main Apts” was in the original ED definition, we will ignore it for the street name transcription and just record “Main Apts”. We WILL record any formal names for such apartments, hotels and institutions (e.g. Knickerbocker Hotel).

Many institutions have their own ED number, with nothing else in that ED. But our ED Finder tool is mainly based on street names, and that is what most researchers will be looking for and expecting from us. In addition, if you lived at “Home for Poor, Destitute and Feeble-Minded Adults” would your mail be addressed to that or to a street address? So we want to add the street names, whenever possible, to the Institutional EDs. Suppose we have an ED consisting only of a large school, for example, we should include in the ED not only the name of the school, but also the street names that make up the block(s) on which the school is located.

The figure on the right shows this situation from Burbank’s ED definitions for 1950. Note the definition of EDs 62-13 and 62-14. The School which is the only item in 62-14 is within the boundaries indicated for 62-13 but was explicitly “excluded” from that ED. So in this case, when we did the definition transcriptions, we did not make any mention of the school in 62-13. What we want to do is to add the street names that surround the school for your street list transcription for 62-14.

How can we determine those streets? To do that, let’s go back to the Burbank 1950 ED map (BURBANK MAP) or the smaller map (BURBANK MAP RESIZED). First, look at the bottom of the map, under the CITY OF BURBANK name, and you will see a section for SPECIAL ENUMERATION AREAS. ED 62-14 is listed. Probably these sorts of EDs are found near the City name on a given map but for very large cities, they may be all together on one section of the map. Now, scroll to the top left of the Burbank map, and within ED 62-13 (written as simply "13") you will see a circle with the

letter “S” (for Special?). That’s where the school is located and we can clearly see the street names on the block that contains the school and add those (4) names to our ED transcription. (Note1: If you are working from a Census Bureau block map, then Joel will give you instructions on how to find the street names around such institutions using that resource. Note2: the letter “S” appears for all types of institutions, so it’s not clear if it stands for a particular word or not) Hint: if you are using a spreadsheet to keep track of your progress and reach an ED that has the “S” in a circle, you can probably figure out it’s ED # (the ED # sequence on the map will have a missing #), note it is an institution on your spreadsheet and add on that line the street names on that block, and go back at the end with the help of the ED definitions, to add the name of the institution and it’s boundary blocks you previously noted to the transcription.

Variations in Street Names

There are many name errors and name variations on the original ED text descriptions. Some we inadvertently introduced and others came from the original Census Bureau typed source document. Sometimes the same street is shown with different spellings, sometimes with a compass modifier and sometimes without it, and sometimes as an "Avenue" and sometimes as a "Street." Our guideline is to reduce variations whenever possible.

Spelling variations are usually easy to spot and you can use your judgment on those but be consistent. Variations in street modifiers are usually harder to deal with. A look at a map (even a contemporary map if a 1950 map is not available) might resolve the problems of name variations. Your own knowledge of the city could be used in place of a map.

Here’s a situation that isn’t that uncommon on the original ED text descriptions. We were transcribing the ED definitions for Springfield, MO, and noted that Hampton was showing as both an Avenue and just plain Hampton (as a Street) on the ED definition scans. We noted that every occurrence except one is an Ave. Does Springfield have both a Hampton Street and a Hampton Avenue? We looked at both a modern map and a circa 1950 map, to determine if both Hampton Avenue and Hampton Street are found on those maps. We found only Hampton Avenue. We also noted that both street name versions appeared in a limited area within the city, and the EDs are close/next to each other. That was another indication that they were probably the same street. So we changed the single occurrence of Hampton (Street) to Hampton Ave on our ED definition transcription. Another way we could have figured this out was to check Springfield MO on our 1940 ED Finder utility and see the list of streets. If we did that, we would see that Hampton only appears as an Avenue, which again leads us to the same conclusion. Hopefully on the map itself these sorts of paradoxes will be rare.

If you use the Checklist entry tool, then differences in spelling between the 1950 street name transcription and the 1940 street name should be obvious.

Large Cities, Split Blocks

This paragraph discusses a situation you may encounter in a large city. You look at your map and see that a SINGLE BLOCK has two EDs (or if you are working off of the ED text definitions, the definition shows 3 boundary features which could mean a triangular ED or an ED on a split block). Let’s look at such an example with two consecutive Manhattan ED numbers, 31-2137 and 31-2138. NYC SPLIT EXAMPLE Here’s what 31-2137’s text transcription looks like: New York^31-2137^MANHATTAN BOROUGH, NEW YORK CITY (TRACT 291) BOUNDED BY SHERMAN AVE FROM AND INCL HOUSE NUMBER 160; ACADEMY; VERMILYEA AVE TO AND INCL HOUSE NUMBER 71

What’s happening here? To make it clearer, we show here a graphic of the two EDs. You can see that a single block (# 3 of Tract 291) with a high population has been divided into 2 separate EDs. Our future researchers won’t know that, and if we entered on our street list only the three street name boundaries for each of these EDs, and the researchers entered all four street names on the block in our entry tool, than their search would give negative results. Neither of the EDs contain all four street names on that block. So for these types of EDs, we need to enter ALL the street names on the block, including the street name of the side of the block not covered by the original ED definition. WE WON’T ENTER THE HOUSE NUMBER, ONLY THE STREET NAMES. So we would end up with two EDs, each with the same four street names on the same block. Our researchers would find those two ED numbers from our One-Step Finder Utility but would not be able to get down to a single ED, unless they then looked at the ED map or the original definition scan/text transcription of this ED (and understood what they were seeing!). But this is far better than winding up with negative results.

Our goal is always to be useful, not necessarily accurate with our street indexes.

Note: In the above example, the Checklist Entry tool would show 3 items if you immediately pressed the seed button after entering the ED number: 204th W; Sherman Ave To And Excl House Number 160; and Vermilyea Ave From And Excl House Number 71. You would check the 204th W, and enter in the additional streets box: Vermilyea Ave; Academy; and Sherman Ave.

Proofing

Be on the lookout for spelling errors, typos, omissions, and wrong boundary names (perhaps from a wrong ED number) on your Checklist entry tool. Be aware that we will work on the principle that the ED map “trumps” the ED definitions. That is, we will trust the map boundaries and map street names that are shown over the ED definition texts. However, for EDs that were split into A, B, etc. parts, those individual split areas will NOT appear on the ED maps.

Finally, it is unlikely that there is going to be a proofing of the accuracy of your work. We can check for variations in street names, but not for typos. So don’t rush through these EDs, and be careful with your data entries.

YAHOO Groups

We have established a Yahoo Groups page for the One-Step 1950 projects for our volunteers. It can be found at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/1950Census/?yguid=158050055

Y! (Yahoo Groups) is a collection of message boards. Members can post to the board and will receive notifications whenever a new post occurs. You can get these messages as they are posted or on “digest” (once a day). The messages are archived and are searchable. Files and photos can be added to the message board, and polls taken of the members.

In this way, every volunteer who joins the project is privy to past discussions that we have on solving problems that are encountered during the course of our transcriptions. Unless you tell us otherwise, we will add your name to the membership list of the 1950Census Y!. The general public will not have access to the site. Your email address will be confidential and will not be seen by other board

members. You can withdraw from the list at any time directly from the Y! site or request Joel to remove you.

Because we elected for maximum privacy of your email address on the board, you will only be able to post messages by going to the home page of the 1950 group and post from there.

We anticipate that you will ask questions of a general nature on Y!. Thus, if your question is that you can’t read a specific street name on a specific ED scan, it might be better to address that to Joel. However, if instead you change that question so it reads that you want to know how to handle illegible street names within scans or maps, then that could be asked on Y! and you (and all of us) might get suggestions such as using the block street names on the 1940 census, writing Unknown for that street name, using other maps for figuring out the name, etc.

Joining the Project

If you've read all this and haven't become discouraged, then it's time to join the project. You do so by going to our Pick City Form (and shown on the right) and picking the cities you would like to work on. We will be notified automatically when you do so and we will assign you a city as soon as possible. If you resubmit another list of cities, they will replace the existing list of choices, although Joel may have recorded those earlier choices on his records. If your city is not on the list, and has not been already transcribed, we may still consider including it in our tables; email us with your request. We acknowledge all our volunteers on the One-Step website. Thanks in advance.

-- Steve Morse, Joel Weintraub