Thanksgiving is a great time to learn a little or a lot about one’s relatives and ancestors. Unexpected things may pop up. I gleaned a fair bit from our Thanksgiving conversations, most of which I’ll share after some further processing.
But one of the surprising bits was this: I asked my father if he recalled ever talking to a census taker. He replied, “I was a census taker.”
In 1950, he answered a newspaper ad in Houston, Texas, to become an enumerator for that year’s census. He was assigned to Houston’s fifth ward (where he lived). He said it was hard work, involved a lot of walking. Most everybody was cooperative, including Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, who was awakened after just having gotten to sleep following a long night of work.
Tags: 1950 Census, Harris County, Houston, Texas
November 25th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Interesting! We see lots of census data, but rarely hear about the collectors
November 25th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
My father was 18 years old and needed the money to go to school. It was the most unusual job he ever had!
December 9th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
My grandmother lived in Houston’s 5th Ward until very recently. Nice anecdotal story.