Yes, You Can Get Info From the 1940 Census Today!

And every census through 2000!

Well, sort of. There are a lot of caveats here. First of all, it will cost you up to $75.00 per person. That's right--$75.00 per person!

The Census Bureau provides what it calls "Age Search," under which they will search confidential census records from 1910 to 2000 and issue an "official transcript" of the results. For $65.00, you can get the person’s name, relationship to household head, age at the time of the census, and state of birth. Citizenship will be provided if the person was foreign born. Single items of data such as occupation for Black Lung cases can be provided upon request. If a person is not found, a form will be sent with that information.

For an additional $10.00, you can receive what the Census Bureau calls the "full schedule."The full schedule is the complete one line entry of personal data recorded for that individual ONLY. This will be furnished in addition to the regular transcript. Full schedules are not available for 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000.

Here's catch no. 2: transcripts can only be issued to the named person, his or her heirs or legal representatives. This is pretty restrictive and you'd have to really, really want the information that you couldn't get anywhere else. But now you know that you can get later census information if you need it.

Here's a link to the Census Bureau page with info:

http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/agesearch.html

Thanks to Terrance Garnett for his tip posted at AfriGeneas Genealogy and History Forum.