I had a hard time finding my parents, but when I found them, there were surprises. It turns out my Dad was not working, but my Mom was working. Also, my mother's sister was living with them. They had no children at this time.
Watching on youtube. Watching on replay. It took a long time to get the names searchable by just the name. Thank you to all of the workers, and volunteers for their hard work.
About how a name is spelled vs how it sounds: one of my emigrated families from Sweden was called Stålhandske (which is ”steel glove” in English, it was a blacksmith surname), and when I found them in Chicago in an early census (maybe 1900) they were recorded with the surname Stolanski. I don’t even remember how I managed to find them, but I made sure they were the correct family.
I have a question. I have tried to research an assault on my grandma and grand aunt that happened in 1945 in Illinois. I have only found one newspaper. Tried calling various places and nobody could tell me where to look for more info. Where can I look for more info? This was in East St. Louis.
Were there any other people in your household in April 1950? If so, try searching for them. Also, don't set everything to "exact" in your searches. That can end up excluding results that are actually a match. (For example, if the enumerator really got the name wrong or it was mis-indexed.)
