WALTHAM, Mass. -- They arrived in the middle of the night, bringing great hopes and deep personal mysteries.
One woman hoped to shed light on whether her great-great-grandfather was a slave.
Another was seeking clues to when the boat carrying her grandfather arrived from Europe.
And two sisters were hoping to write the final chapter in a drama that began with a murder in a small town in Iowa almost a century ago.
They were among more than three dozen genealogists who arrived at the National Archives and Records Administration's regional facility for the midnight opening of the 1930 U.S. Census population schedules, the first place in the nation the records became available. Because the schedules carry detailed personal information -- including names, ages and family, economic and literacy data -- federal law bars them from public view for 72 years to protect the privacy of those responding. With fanfare and a ribbon-cutting, the 1930 information became public early yesterday, just after midnight.
Genealogists from every New England state except Vermont were there, along with researchers from Michigan -- who were visiting relatives in New England for Easter -- and from New York.
Diane M. Killeen, of Chelmsford, Mass., was the first to arrive, signing in at 9:40 p.m., hoping to be the first genealogist in the country to get at the 1930 Census.
"I still have to beat everyone to the rolls," Killeen said. But she gave herself a head start, stopping by last week to figure out where among the 2,668 rolls of microfilm her grandparents' street was recorded. "I'm going right to the roll. I already have it: Roll 1464, the Bronx, N.Y."
For Killeen, there was no question but to join in the Archives' midnight madness. "I've been waiting for years for this census to be open," she said. Killeen's task sounded deceptively simple: "I'm looking for my father's father."
Her grandparents were immigrants, arriving between the 1920 Census and the 1930 Census, which would be the first to list them. She has already tracked down the record of her grandmother's arrival in this country, in 1922, but came to the Archives last night hoping for clues to her grandfather's arrival. Included among the 32 bits of information were answers to questions about whether people owned a radio or lived on a farm along with the year of arrival and naturalization for immigrants. Learning those for her grandfather could point Killeen in the direction of the official documents recording those events.
Debbie Walton, of Onset, Mass., and her sister, Brina Walton, also were tackling a detective story:
"We're looking for my 97-year-old grandmother's sister," explained Debbie Walton. "In 1909, their mother was murdered and they were sent to different adoptive homes." The girls had been born in Ottumwa, Iowa, and never saw each other again. In the 1960s, when Walton's grandmother went looking for her sister, the adoption agency refused to open its records.
That left Walton with far fewer clues than most other researchers at the Archives last night. She knew that her grandmother's sister's first name was Dola, that she had moved to Fresno, Calif., and that she was married by the 1930 Census. But she did not have her married name or her address, which is the key to locating someone.
"How do you think we're going to look?" Walton said. "Every single record through Fresno. We'll stay all the way until I go to work tomorrow."
The Waltons feel the press of time, wanting to complete their search while their grandmother is alive.
For Evelyn Pounds, the mystery is why her great-great-grandfather, Abe Peoples, an African-American born in Mississippi in 1835, always seemed to live near the family of a white doctor, even following the doctor when he moved from Mississippi to Louisiana.
"There's some kind of tie there, some connection -- but I can't say it was ownership -- some kind of close tie," said Pounds, of Boston. Part of the mystery is that her great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union, which was not unheard of for fugitive slaves, then returned to live near the doctor after the war was ended and slavery abolished.
The search yesterday did not prove particularly fruitful, at least as far as Abe Peoples was concerned. Although Pounds located many relatives, she located no mention of him. "I'm assuming he's passed or moved to another city," she said. "I've found all that I can find."
Killeen, who took a day off from her job teaching math at Billerica Memorial High School, met with similar frustration looking for her grandparents, Julia and Frank Heske, in the Bronx. The search meant several hours at a microfilm reader, scanning the projected images of census forms as they scrolled up the screen. "This is not a fast process," Killeen said. She hit the end of the roll of film with no luck. But she is hopeful that, perhaps, just an address was incorrect and she can still find her grandparents. "I'm going back, very slowly, checking everybody."
Although Killeen was the first to see the 1930 Census, Peggy Brown, of Maynard, Mass., was the first to hit pay dirt. "I found my mother at two minutes past midnight," Brown said. "She was curious to know what her father did for work, and he was a deputy sheriff. I didn't think it would be this easy."
Easy was not a word in the Walton sisters' vocabulary yesterday.
A little after 6 a.m., the Waltons gave up their search -- for now.
"We realized if we kept on going we would probably miss something because we were pretty tired," Debbie Walton said. She added that they plan to search the counties around Fresno, too. "We're not stopping just yet. We're not dead yet. We're going to keep going on."
