1940 Census - Known Issues

Known Issues
Question #1: The images for Ohio, enumeration districts 71-1 to 71-4 are not available on FamilySearch. Will they be available in the future? Answer #1: Images (about 78) for these districts were never delivered by the National Archives and Records Administration ( NARA). FamilySearch will be working with NARA to procure those images and publish them with the 1940 U.S. Census Collection online.

Question #2. When I search for images in 1940 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, Hoboken ED 9-141 thru 9-160, I get the wrong image. It also appears that these images are repeated in later pages. How can I get the correct images. Answer #2 The images in the 1940 U.S. Census collection at FamilySearch were published as they were received from the National Archives and Records Administration ( NARA). It appears that the first 393 images were overwritten and replaced with the images from the second half of the film, in reverse order, resulting is missing, mislinked and disordered images.

FamilySearch will be working with NARA to get the images in correct order and to procure the missing images. A suggested workaround for disordered records is the browse the entire set of records to locate the correct image.

Question #3: I am unable to read the details of the image at Alabama &gt; Conecuh &gt; Election Precinct 13 &gt; 18-19 Election Precinct 13 Repton outside Repton Town, image number 16. Can I find out the details of this image? Answer #3: This entire page is duplicated on Image 18.

Questiion #4: a. Why are the images taking so long time to load.? b. I have to wait between 20-30 seconds per image. The first images to load is black. Is it missing? c. Sometimes I can only see half an image load. How can I view the entire image? Answer #4: The 1940 U.S. Census images received from the National Archive and Records Administration (NARA) are of the highest quality, containing very dense pixels resulting in large file sizes. Older computers and slower internet connections will experience slow image loading. See "Images in Historical Records are slow to load due to insufficient RAM."

There may be instances where images appear as a black screen. The workaround is to browse to the next image using the right arrow key in the upper righthand corner of the screen. See "How do I zoom or move an image found in Historical Records."

Once all of the original images from NARA have been uploaded, FamilySearch will go back and reduce the image size on previously loaded images. This process will not affect the image quality. The process of replacing large images with smaller ones should provide a seamless viewing experience for users; images will just load faster than previously.

Return to the United States Census 1940 Learn More page.

Return to the United States Census, 1940