Today Footnote.com announced it will digitize and create a searchable database for all publicly available U.S. Federal Censuses, ranging from the first U.S. Census taken in 1790 to the most current public census from 1930. Through its partnership with the National Archives, Footnote.com will add more than 9.5 million images featuring over half a billion names to its extensive online record collection.

With over 60 million historical records already online, Footnote.com will use the U.S. Census records to tie content together, creating a pathway to discover additional records that previously have been difficult to find.

“We see the census as a highway leading back to the 18th century,” explains Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “This Census Highway provides off-ramps leading to additional records on the site such as naturalization records, historical newspapers, military records and more. Going forward, Footnote.com will continue to ad valuable and unique collections that will enhance the census collection.”

As more census decades are added to the site, visitors to Footnote.com can view the status for each decade and sign up for an email notification when more records are added to the site for a particular year.

View the Census Progress Page on Footnote.com.

In addition to making these records more accessible, Footnote.com is advancing the way people use the census by creating an interactive experience. Footnote members can enrich the census records by adding their own contributions. Users can:

• Add comments and insights about a person
• Upload and attach scanned photos or documents related to that person
• Generate a Footnote Page for any individual that features stories, a photo gallery, timeline and map
• Identify relatives found in the census by clicking the I’m Related button

“We will continue to move aggressively to add records to the site, specifically those that are requested by our members and others that are not otherwise available on the internet,” said Wilding.

The Interactive Census Project is now underway. Enjoy and interact with the project here.

Julian Noga was raised in the town of Skrzynka, Poland by his mother on her four-acre farm while his father was in the United States.  When Julian was 16 years, he left home and moved to Tarnow. In downtown Tarnow, he worked as a dishwasher at an elegant Jewish club.

When the Germans invaded Poland in September of 1939, Julian returned to his home town of Skrynka. He returned home to find that 27 of Skrzynka’s Jews were forced to dig their own graves and then shot. He hid a rifle in some nearby woods but was unable to use it before he was deported to Austria to do farm labor for a rich landowner near Linz.

Near Linz, he fell in love with Frieda, the land owner’s daughter. She loved him too. Her father objected, but the two continued to meet at night in secret. Nazi law forbade romance between Poles and Germans and the Gestapo warned Julian that if he ever saw Frieda again he would be hanged. He was assigned to another farm but continued to see Frieda. He was arrested and transferred to Flossenbürg. In Flossenbürg, Julian was sentenced to do backbreaking labor in a quarry.

Julian was liberated on April 23, 1945 and after the war he reunited with his love Frieda. You can remember Julian and share more of his stories on his Footnote page.