1940 US Census - ancestry, findmypast and FamilySearch
 

Just seen this on familysearch.org

http://the1940census.com/?cid=fsHomeT1940Text

Could be useful for any of us with American relatives....and it will be FREE :)

Thanks for the link, Ann. I just volunteered! What was I thinking?

The website has been launched, with an information video, http://www.1940census.archives.gov/ - the census is due to go live on April 2nd :)

Oooh, only another 4 weeks (plus a couple of days - blinking leap year making it a day longer than it should be!)

Should be going live some time today! As I understand it, there won't be a name index yet, so you will need to know whereabouts the people you're looking for were living in 1940. Ancestry has lots of US city directories from around that time but the search for those isn't very good - it seems to be best to do a name search without selecting a place and then just look through the results for people in the place you want.

A few counties in Delaware seem to be live (for browsing) on FamilySearch already:

Delaware counties 1940

Ooh, and some of the states (also Guam) are available to browse on ancestry now:
http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2442

California - the one I want, of course - isn't included yet :mad:

"Panamal Canal", lol. They (ancestry) also have American Samoa and the Virgin Islands, as well as Delaware, DC, Indiana, Maine, Nevada, and Rhode Island so far. I don't know if any of these are complete. Some have more counties available than others do.

The new US findmypast site has a facility where you can tell them who you want to find and they will let you know when those records are available:
http://www.findmypast.com/

If you scroll down the page you see that only DC and Nevada are complete as yet. (Pretty easy, not much population!)