Looking for a specific ED in the 1950 U.S. Census (by searching a specific street's name)

Question

I am looking for a ED in the 1950 U.S. Census. The name of street is 94 Second Ave Newark, Essex County, New Jersey.

Using the Steve Morse’s One-Step Webpages here is was able to narrow it down to ED 30-218 or ED 30-219, however, I do not find the correct address, but number above 94 or below.

Do I miss something?

Answer 1

When possible, I cross-check addresses against the USPS Zip Code Finder, and local property tax records so I can get a landowner's map with the property lines on it. If the building is still deliverable, and the property information card shows a building built before the census year in question, then I download relevant block-and-lot maps for the neighborhood in question. If the modern properties don't seem to correspond to the ED maps of the period (see below), I look for articles about street re-naming and re-numbering in historical newspapers.

If you haven't done so already, use some of the other One-Step tools on Stephen P. Morse's site.

• Download the ED maps for the area and locate the EDs of interest on the map.
• Using the Unified Finder, read the description of the EDs (either the transcription, from the microfilm images, or both) and try to determine the enumerator's path. The Field Enumeration Procedures begin on page 2 of the Urban Enumerator's Manual, which is online at Hathi Trust. Page 3 has a map showing which way around the block the enumerator was supposed to walk.

• Use the modern-day maps via Google or Bing and compare them to the 1950 ED maps. Do they make sense, or are there signs the street may have been re-numbered?
• Correlate some of the people you can find in your target EDs with a city directory close to the 1950 Census in time.

If everything looks good, and you think you're in the right area, then

• Check all the sheets from Sheet 71 to the end of the ED in case the address was visited as part of a callback.
• Look for notes about households who are not at home in the main sequence of the EDs.
• Check the surrounding EDs to your EDs of interest in case that address was enumerated in those EDs by mistake.

For an example of a project to map an entire immigrant community over time, see Tammy Hepps' site Homestead Hebrews. These articles are of special interest:

• "Where Are They All Kept?": Undercounted Immigrants in the 1900 Census
• When Henry Silverstein Got Cold: Fraud in the 1920 Census
• The One Where I Obsess Over All the People I Can't Find in the Census

Bear in mind that some people simply weren't counted, and in some EDs, the Census Bureau may have skipped pages when the Census was microfilmed. The originals have been destroyed, so if a page was missed, we can't ask them to go back to the paper records.

Related questions on Genealogy Stack Exchange:

• Finding people in the 1950 Census without using the index
• Missing Enumeration District/Families in the 1920 U.S. Census

Resources:

• NARA online article on the 1950 Census: Instructions for Enumerators and the public
• Prologue Magazine: Discovering Your Neighborhood How to Use National Archives Records to Find Out More about Where You Live by M. Marie Maxwell
• Blog posts on the 1950 Census Table of Contents for the series by Claire Kluskens on NARA's History Hub. Articles of particular interests are:
• 1950 Census Finds: No One at Home!
• 1950 Census: Enumerated Out-of-Order - “Callbacks” and Others on Page 71 and Up
• 1950 Census: No One at Home: Where is Page 71, 72, 73, ... 87, 88, 89 ????
• 1950 Census: Willfully Missing
• 1950 Census: "Persons Transcribed from ICRs and MPFs" and "Persons Not Assigned to Dwelling Units"
• 1950 Census: Geographic Boundary Correspondence