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6.9 earthquake felt in Southern California

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Happy Birthday, Mackenzie Snyder

<p>While the uproar over the citizenship question proposed for the U.S. Census of 2020 is getting all the headlines, there&#8217;s a related matter that&#8217;s important to genealogists.</p><p>Two years later &#8212; in spring of 2022 &#8212; the Census of 1950 will become available to the public. This first census taken after World War II will offer a picture of Americans in the postwar years of explosive growth and change.</p><p>That era saw people move to take advantage of new jobs, many of which were far from their old homes, as the economy boomed. It also saw millions of military veterans, many of them married and starting families, take advantage of the GI Bill, which provided generous amounts of money for college, as well as the &#8220;GI loans&#8221; providing federal backing for home buyers. Suburbs and planned communities grew. The era of explosive population growth known as the &#8220;baby boom&#8221; was underway.</p><p>Many new citizens turned up. A lot of military people serving abroad married foreign nationals, whom they brought home when their tours of duty ended. Thousands of people displaced by war or persecution in Europe also came to America in the late 1940s. The Census of 1950, incidentally, was the last one to ask if a resident born abroad had become a naturalized citizen.</p><p>Other changes occurred, likely to be reflected in the census. Government helped many wounded veterans secure jobs in private industry or government and to move when necessary. The new Veterans Administration, which included a chain of hospitals, became a significant employer.</p><p>Meanwhile, preparations for the 2020 U.S. Census remain uncertain as of this writing because of a dispute over inclusion of a question about respondents&#8217; citizenship. The U.S. Supreme Court seemingly ended the dispute by ruling against the administration&#8217;s plan to include the citizenship question. But then the Trump administration quickly announced that alternative means of getting the information via the census would be explored. Printing of the forms was supposed to start July 1.</p><p>Resources: If you&#8217;re not in touch with FamilySearch, the free online database of genealogy materials, you&#8217;re running the risk of missing something vital. Every week brings reams more of useful documentation being added. This week&#8217;s mixed bag includes more than 1.5 million records of English and Welsh wills and administrations, as well as more than 442,000 entries in the BillionGraves Index. There&#8217;s lots more too &#8211; in fact, millions more entries.</p><p>Nanticoke News: The Nanticoke Historical Society will hold an open house today 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at its Samantha Mill House headquarters, next to the Mill Memorial Library. Visitors may tour the site and see the collection of local historical and genealogical materials the society has collected.</p><p>Plymouth News: Hats off to the Plymouth Historical Society for its memorial garden at the site of the Avondale Mine disaster of 1869. A fire above the shaft resulted in the deaths of 110 men and boys, making it Wyoming Valley&#8217;s worst-ever loss of life in mining.</p><p>News Notes: New York state recently moved toward allowing adoptees to gain access to their birth certificates at age 18. The measure passed both houses of the state legislature last week, but as of this writing had not been signed or rejected by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Most states, including Pennsylvania, tend to restrict access in some way. Advocates of closed records cite the need for privacy by birth parents, while people advocating open records side with offspring who for health, genealogy or other reasons want to know exactly who their birth parents were.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Tom Mooney Mug</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/web1_TOM_MOONEY.jpg</photo0><caption0>Tom Mooney Mug</caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Tom Mooney</p><p>For Times Leader</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader genealogy columnist. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Release of 1950 census will provide great insight