1940 Census. Black Sheep David Rufus.

The 1940 Census was released last year. The government does not release census data until the census is 72 years old. You can access the data on the internet. I was looking forward to see where my Dad and I were living in 1940. I was 15 then. Shucks, all my searches do not bring anything up. I believe that we were not counted in the 1940 census. I have worked part time for the government on the census of 2000 and 2010. I can understand how people can be missed.

The 1930 census of my family was really goofed up. Wrong names and a child that did not exist. But the census is an invaluable aid in genealogy research.

I discovered several years ago that David Rufus Ireton, the grandfather of my wife Jackie and the great grandfather of my children was in Leavenworth Prison in 1900 at the age of 19 for larceny. After that he was in the Albuquerque New Mexico County jail and the federal prison at MeNeil Island in Washington. I knew that he died in 1950 in Bakersfield, California. I looked him up in the 1940 census and he was an inmate at Folsom Prison in California. Poor guy. Four prisons in forty years. Jackie's father never mentioned him once. I would like to know more about him. Black sheep are more interesting. Below is a head shot of Rufus from Leavenworth in 1900 at age 19.

I am going to visit the town in the Oklahoma where Rufus was born and where his father is buried, It is the town of Alex.