Correction 17 Oct 2009: Anna did not marry Karl Janik. They had the same address, & I believe that Anna & Julia were Mazukiewicz sisters. Trying to get Julia's death certificate to show her maiden name. See updates to info on Karl & Julia on posting dated 17 Oct 2009.
I find it very challenging to guess how census takers would spell our family names & then how someone would index that name. Adam Sanetra said on Ellis Island, in 1923, that he was going to live with his brother-in-law Karl Janick, at 1058 Marshfield Ave. Adam's wife, Alfreda Mazurkiewicz, had a sister Anna Mazurkiewics that married Ignatz Baranowski. His WWI draft registration card gave his address as 1058 Marshfield Ave.
I found this immensely helpful website. (link below) It has Census maps for all the Chicago Census from 1870-1930. So take your address, then look at a Google street map for what streets are closest to your address. Keep the Google street map setting handy to compare with the map on this site. Then find nearby streets, and you can see your ward and enumeration district. I know on Ancestry.com you can go to the census, then go straight to the ward, then district, and search manually. Not sure about other sites. When you can get these numbers it's only abt 15-20 pages to search through. Here's an example:
I was looking for 1058 N. Marshfield Ave in the 1920 Census. So I went to this site (link below), then selected the 1920 Census map. Looking at the major roads, I saw that ward 15 looked like it covered my address. So I clicked on the number "15" which had a hyperlink to open ward 15's map. Then I clicked "zoom" icon, and could see the streets in ward 15, and see which district my address was at, which was district #894.
Then I went to Ancestry.com, selected the 1920 Census, selected ward #15, then selected district #894, and a few pages later I saw Marshfield Ave in the far left column, in the margins. Then I looked for house #1058, in the first Census column. There was Carol Janik & his wife Julia. Karl was spelled Carol, which I could see with Karol being a common spelling.
Also on this site is info about the street changes of 1909 & 1911. Branislawa Sanetra immigrated the year of the second street change names. The address she gave for her father Adam was at least 30 blocks away from where Adam actually lived, and they never found each other. I wonder how many other people that happened to, because of changes and not able to get word to the family member immigrating in time?
Another really great resource on this site is the 1928-1929 Polk criss-cross directory. So you can look up an address, organized alphabetically by the street names, then look to your house number. I am really grateful to the people who worked on the resources for this site. I just discovered this site yesterday and already have found a few things I'd been looking for. These resources help make it easier if you have an address, and don't know how the Census taker spelled the names. Posting in case it can help others in their searches.
http://www.alookatcook.com/
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