FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com have separate projects for indexing the 1940 U.S. Federal Census.

The FamilySearch project is 50% done. Over a dozen states are searchable, and another dozen or so are fully indexed. For a complete list please see their interactive map.

Ancestry.com has four states searchable at this time: New York, Delaware, Maine, and Nevada, plus the District of Columbia. New York and Maine are only searchable at Ancestry right now. Thanks to Frances Rubino for letting me know NY is up at Ancestry.

Searching at Ancestry usually requires a paid subscription. New York State residents, however, may obtain a free account providing access to the census and other NY databases. See the New York State Archives’ Ancestry.com New York page for details. And of course the club has a subscription, available at our Research Center.

Our indexing group has contributed about 40,000 names to the FamilySearch project. We had a meeting yesterday to discuss problems; we also found indexing gave us some unexpected insights into life in the U.S. 72 years ago. We may ask Darwin to give another indexing class in the fall. The 1940 Census might be finished by then, but there are lots of other projects available. Maybe the Irish SIG would like to try Ireland’s Calendar of Wills and Administrations, 1858 – 1920, for example. See FamilySearch Indexing Projects for details on this and others.