Kleyleins in the 1940 US Federal Census

I actually have scheduled some time to wallow in genealogy this holiday season and today I began that wallowing by going through the 1940 census.  I will admit that I am a bit disappointed in some of the transcription errors I came across (I've been using Ancestry and I know it was all out-sourced.).  For instance, "Andrene" instead of "Andrew"?  Come on.

But I'll also admit that the surname I searched on is not an easy one for transcribers or enumerators.  Kleylein is a rare surname.  Growing up I was so frustrated and wished my last name was Smith.  Once I started genealogy though I counted my lucky stars for such an unusual name.  I discussed its origin a bit in an earlier blog posting.

Today I just looked in the 1940 US Federal census for any occurence of the name "Kleylein" or its variant "Kleilein".

Here is what I found:


1) There are 12 households of Kleyleins in the US in 1940 (10 Kleyleins and 2 Kleileins).  There could be 1 or 2 more but they are currently spelled so incorrectly in the ancestry database that I couldn't find them.  I might stumble across them later.  :-)

2) 5 of them are in the Baltimore, Maryland area. 

3) 4 of them are in either Brooklyn or Queens, NY.

4) 1 of them are in Miami, Florida.

5) 2 of them (the Kleileins) are in Richland County, Ohio.


My direct line is the Baltimore branch of the family.  It's my grandfather there in Miami living with his mom and step-dad - he came from the Baltimore Kleyleins.

Below is a map showing the distribution.  Just a handful of clusters except for the 1 outlier way down in Florida.

Most of the Kleyleins are first generation immigrants or the children of those immigrants.  It looks like the Kleileins were here earlier, in the 1800s and may have actually migrated to Ohio from Pittsburgh.  That, however, is research for another day.  :-)