US Census & City Directories

It can be very challenging to find Polish names on the US Census. Someone showed me how to look up people manually by their address. This helped me start finding people, so I will share the process on this page. It is much easier to do database searches on websites. But sometimes the names were not indexed correctly or written to where we might recognize them, so we can’t find people. That’s when manually looking up addresses helps. Some relatives like Adam Sanetra are very challenging because they rented and used a different address on every record. Most of the recently arrived immigrants I’ve looked for, seem to need a place to rent while they save up to buy a house. Then they stay in that house they purchased for many years. Those families are much easier to find records for.

This first example (above) is Adam Sanetra on the 1910 Census, the last record I have of the family together. The city ward and enumeration district numbers are in the upper right corner of the census page. Adam Sanetra and his family were living at 1424 Lill Avenue. Four families were renting that house. Adam was a cabinet maker and worked for the casket industry. There are two mistakes on this record. They actually arrived February 1904, but this says they immigrated 1903. It’s close enough to find them in manifest searches though. Rosalie and Adam had been married for 10 years, but Rosalie was actually the mother of 4 children, 4 living, not 3 as this record shows. Only 3 children were living in the United States, but Bronisława was still living in Poland.

The image above shows Bronisław Sanetra in the orphanage, on the 1920 Census. The orphanage called him Bruno. The top of this page has a space for “name of institution.” St. Hedwig’s Institute is written there.

How to Manually Look Someone Up on the Census

I could not find Adam Sanetra or Karol Janik in 1920. I knew the address 1058 Marshfield Avenue from Karol’s naturalization record, after 1920. I looked in the city directory to see what address Karol Janik had before 1920. I looked at the Chicago City Directories on Fold3. (a paid site)

1) I clicked on “browse”, 2) I clicked on United States, 3) I typed in “Chicago” to see the directories.

Karol Janik wasn’t showing up in database searches, but I went to where the “J” surnames began in the 1916 city directory. I found Karol living at 1058 Marshfield Avenue. He was listed as Carol, (Carl or Charles in English). Karol’s brothers Edward and Joseph Janik were living at the same address.

Here is where you can search for several thousand enumeration district maps on the National Archives website. I typed Cook County for Chicago, but only saw the results for the 1940 and 1950 Census.

Here is a website I use with the Chicago Census maps for multiple years. This 1920 enumeration map has hyperlinks to the various wards and districts. First I looked on a map to see where the address is today. I looked at neighboring streets. The red pin is where 1058 Marshfield Ave is.

I looked at the enumeration map and Ward 15 covers the area I was looking for, so I clicked on the number 15, which led to this image. (below)

The rectangle numbered 894 looked like where Karol Janik lived. I wrote the ward and enumerantion numbers down then went to Ancestry.com (paid site).

I clicked on US. Federal Census Collection (pink arrow above), then I scrolled down to click on the 1920 Census.

I selected the information from the drop down menus. I select the state of Illinois. Then I clicked on “Cook (Chicago)”, a separate option from Cook County. I chose the ward (township on this search page), then the enumeration district. I clicked on the blue numbers “District 0894”. There were 25 images to look through. The street names are in the left margin on the census pages, running up the page, so I looked for the word “Marshfield” in the margins.

Karol Janik was on the 10th page, image 19 of 25. See the numbers in the upper left of the page, that matched the search. Adam Sanetra was not living with his brother-in-law Karol Janik when the 1920 Census was taken. I have not yet found Adam or his wife Alfreda in 1920. They married in December 1920, the Census was taken 11 months earlier, in January 1920. Adam, Alfreda, Bronisław and Józef left the United Stated in 1922 and returned to Poland. In 1923, Adam returned to the United States to work and look for his children. This was the house he lived at in 1923.

Note Karol Janik’s address on his naturalization declaration of intention.