You Can Now Search the 1940 Nebraska Census Records!

I have great news for everyone who has been impatiently waiting since April 2 to search the 1940 Nebraska Census records. You can now search them at: https://familysearch.org/1940census/1940-census-nebraska If you haven’t been following the 1940 census information the census documents were made available on April 2^nd however they had not been indexed. That meant the only way to locate a person in the census was to look at the pages and pages of handwritten records.  Now that the indexing has been completed for Nebraska you can simply search for a person. It’s so much simpler. I’ve been trying to locate one of my grandparents since April 2^nd! My relatives where positive I’d find them living in a specific area of Omaha. Unfortunately for me that general area covered multiple enumeration districts. I looked through hundreds of census pages without any luck. After a quick search this morning I found my grandparents living in Grand Island. I will be having a little talk with my relatives tonight regarding their inaccurate information! As I was using the search form I stumbled across a search feature I wanted to share with everyone. I have a relative with a Czech last name I can never remember how to spell so I tried using a wildcard. It worked after a couple of trials and errors. I consulted help and learned the system supports 2 types of wildcards.

• ? – Use the question mark to represent any one character
• * – Use the asterisk sign to represent zero or more characters

The important thing to note however is that in order to use a wildcard your word must have at least three other letters!  It took me a few tries to get it right because I was only using 2 letters. Learn more about the 1940 census on our website at: http://nebraskaccess.ne.gov/1940census. To keep informed on which states are searchable go to: https://familysearch.org/1940census/?cid=fsHomeT1940Text_v2. There are currently 29 other states that are searchable. Good luck searching!