The 1950 Census - a quick how-to

by Kristen Fehlhaber and Bethany Groff Dorau

A few of the occupations listed by 1950 residents of Fair St and Orange St in Newburyort.: brander at a radio tube factory, payroll clerk at a shoe factory, telephone operator, and floor sweeper.

On April 1, the 1950 U.S. Census was released. It’s completely free and available from the U.S. government at archives.gov. Indexing isn’t complete yet– if you know the name of a family and their location in 1950, you can try to find them, but you might strike out. So at this stage, many people are scanning the census by location. The census was broken down by state and county and then by Enumeration District (referred to as ED going forward). For a city like Newburyport, each ED was drawn to have no more than 1000 people in it. In rural areas, EDs might have a up to 1400 people.

To look at Newburyport, you can a see a map of the 1950 EDs here: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/12171739.

If you’re looking for West Newbury, the EDs is 5-477 for the western part, 5-478 for the eastern part, and 5-479 for the boys’ orphanage at the current Page School. For Newbury & Byfield, look in ED 5-289 (east of Rt. 1 and Plum Island) and 5-290 (west of Rt. 1). The first page you’ll see is a card summarizing the number of people in the ED. Scroll ahead to see the pages detailing the residents. Newburyport was still full of manufacturing at the time – occupations are listed on the right hand side.

Wondering about the Museum of Old Newbury home at 98 High Street, we clicked on the Newburyport ED map and located the northeast corner of High St. and Fruit St. in ED 5-299 (we added an “X” there).

To see the census records for all the residents of 5-299, follow this link and click on Population Schedules (the button in the lower right corner).

Moving to page 2 of the 36 pages of this district, we see 98 High Street as the first household recorded – lucky us! Streets are written vertically along the left-hand margin.

Margaret W. Cushing is the first person listed, age 95, never married. Below her is Mary M. Driscoll, lodger, age 66, also never married.

Scrolling to the right, we see more information about Margaret Cushing and Mary Driscoll.

Sometimes the census can shed some light on how people described themselves, which can be very useful to a researcher. For example, Mary Margaret Driscoll, who went by Margaret, is described as a “registered nurse”, which is then crossed out and “lodger” substituted. This is likely an error on the part of the census-taker, as her occupation appears in another place on the form. This is where it gets interesting. Though she is described as a lodger, rather than “maid”, the only obvious category for a female employee, Margaret Driscoll clearly believed herself to be employed by Margaret Cushing. When asked what she was doing for most of the previous week, she said she had worked 84 hours, or 7, 12-hour days as a private nurse in the home.

Margaret Driscoll seems to have come to the Cushing household in the mid-1920s to care for Margaret Cushing’s older brother Lawrence, who died in 1933. An article published upon the occasion of Margaret Cushing’s 100th birthday notes that “Miss Margaret Driscoll, R.N.” was unable to attend as she had died one month before. She is described here as Margaret Cushing’s “nurse-companion” for 30 years.

In the years that Miss Driscoll spent with Margaret Cushing, and in the years since, she was described as a “companion” to the older woman, a title that has come to mean something slightly different than it did in the past. At the time, it was somewhere between friendship and employment, a genteel way of blurring the lines between equality and servitude, but Mary Margaret Driscoll’s answers to the census takers tell us that she clearly thought of herself as employed by Margaret Cushing and described all her long days in Margaret’s company as work. This does not detract from any warm feeling these women may have had for each other. The newspaper article notes that she is “missed from the pleasant event.”

Article on Margaret Cushing's 100th birthday. Newburyport Daily News, page 6, February 10, 1955.

We hope you'll take a look at some of these census records – there is much to be learned. And if you discover something interesting, please share it with us at info@newburyhistory.org.