UNDATED - This is an exciting day for genealogists and history buffs.  The federal government is releasing the data from the 1940 census.

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John Decker is an archivist at the Stearns History Museum.  He says it's especially interesting for the people who were alive in 1940 for them to see the information about themselves.

A federal statue requires the census wait a certain number of years before the information is released.  Information from the 1950 census won't be available to us until 2022.

Decker says you'll be able to find the information on popular genealogy websites like ancestry.com, or you can go to your local or state history museum.

Decker says the 1940 census was the first to gather a wide range of information, so it should provide a treasure trove of interesting data for history buffs.

Editor's note: Last year I began research information on my own relatives.  The information that I've found the most interesting so far is that my great-great-grandfather on my mother's side (Ferdinand Schroeder) was the founding father of the southern Minnesota town of Danube.

My grandpa Rueben and and grandma Hazel bought their business Hazel's Cafe'/Rueben's Service Station in 1946, so the pictures above were taken after the 1940 Census.  I'm looking forward to taking a look at the 1940 Census data and finding out more about them during that time.

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