The Facts Unravel #3 Janice Stevens Rice recently transcribed and posted the 1820 Jefferson County Census, the first U.S. Decennial Census to include the state of Mississippi. (The 1810 Census returns for Mississippi Territory have not survived.) http://www.us-census.org/states/mississippi/j-ms.htm#Jefferson ftp://ftp.us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/ms/jefferson/1820/pg0050.txt Both addresses lead to the same place, current summer 2003. THANK YOU, Janice, for your hard work and generosity. My own ancestors appear on every U.S. Census from 1790 to the present. This is no great distinction, shared by perhaps the majority of Americans, but it has needled me to unravel the facts behind every Census. And the Fact-with-a-capital-F is the political nature of the process, starting when politically-divided Congress passes the laws defining each Census. The first Census in 1790 was taken for three purposes. Politically, the totals apportioned votes in the House of Representatives among the states. Financially, each state owed Federal taxes in the same proportion. Militarily, the Census counted free white males 16 and over, the traditional source of "militia" (muh-LISH-uh) or part-time soldiers. Then and later the politically-appointed enumerators tried for accurate totals, but didn't worry much with individual details. The 1800, 1810, and 1820 Censuses counted people by "age cohorts" based on the requirements of the Militia Act of 1798. The new United States decided, against all logic and experience, that local folks could defend Freedom better than a professional Army and Navy. (Maybe they were right, given the frequency of military takeovers in new countries today.) After nine years of wrangling Congress in 1798 passed the Militia Act requiring every able-bodied white male over 16 and under 45 to lift up musket, pike or saber when the bugle called. The Secretary of War allocated manpower quotas to each state, and that's where the Census numbers came in. The 1820 Census for the first time picked up two political issues, the Tariff and the Slave Trade (below.) Since then additions have multiplied. Perhaps the most blatant example is the count of civil ("professional") engineers in 1840. Congress wanted to cut West Point funding. Sylvanus Thayer got this number included to prove the need for more USMA-educated civil engineers. The Federal Court system managed the 1820 Census, and the enumerators, all men, were sworn as Assistant U.S. Marshals giving them legal protection and authority. In most districts each census taker supplied his own pens, ink and paper, with which he copied the lines and columns from a master form. Many enumerators transcribed their results in alphabetical order, perhaps to create polished reports from informal notes. The "first Monday in August" 07-Aug-1820 was official enumeration day. Every person alive on that day was to be counted. The actual count took 13 months, August 1820 to August 1821. See instructions for enumerators in Maine at http://www.upperstjohn.com/1820/instructions.htm address current summer 2003. Each "dwelling house or . . . family" got one line. The first column was the name of the head of household or head of family, "master, mistress, steward, overseer, or other principal person therein." Therein followed six age cohort columns for free white males: -- Little boys 0 to 9, children -- Boys 10 to 15, available for militia before next census -- ** Young men "between 16 and 18," a typical 2-year "draft pool" -- Young men 16-25, primary militia pool -- Adult men 26-44, secondary militia pool -- Old men 45+, not liable for militia service ** This column is the joker in the deck. All the other age cohorts were symmetric, the same for males and females. These guys were ALSO counted in the 16-25 column. The wording invited confusion on whether or not to include 18 year olds. Next, five age cohort columns for free white females (who produced future soldiers): -- Little girls 0 to 9, children -- Girls 10 to 15, marriageable before next census -- Young women 16-25, prime marriage age -- Adult women 26-44, prime childbearing age -- Old women 45+, past childbearing The next column, "foreigners not naturalized," counted aliens not subject to militia service. These people were ALSO counted under their respective age cohorts, free white above or free "colored" below. The next three columns counted the number of people engaged in agriculture, commerce, and manufacture. These people were also counted under their age cohorts. THE perennial issue in Congress was the Tariff or tax on imports, the main source of Federal revenue. In general, farmers and merchants wanted a low tariff or "free trade" and manufacturers wanted a high tariff "to protect jobs." The next sixteen columns counted non-white or "colored" people, first slave males by age cohort: -- Children 0-13 -- Young adults 14-25 -- Adults 26-44 -- Elders 45+ and the same cohorts for slave females, free colored males and free colored females. Another recent issue before Congress called for reopening the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, illegal since 1807. The census totals argued that current slaves produced enough slave babies to meet demand, and closed the debate. For Congressional representation, every five slaves counted as three persons. This strange fraction arose from a compromise among the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1788. The free states wanted NO slaves counted, while the slave states wanted ALL slaves included. Several states were ready to walk out of the Convention when James Monroe dredged up an old "poll" or head tax (tax per person) from colonial Virginia, an earlier compromise that taxed free people at full rate and slaves at 3/5ths of that rate. Late one night the exhausted delegates fell on this fraction like starving Israelites on manna, voted it, then went home to bed. The final column in 1820 counted "all other persons, except Indians not taxed"; aboriginals were supposedly counted under tribal censuses. Has anyone out there ever seen a number in this column? In closing, a cautionary tale. The U.S. Census is a great help for hunting ancestors, but it's just as fallible as the humans involved. At the Liddell household in 1860, the census taker caught stepfather Thomas C. Brown, age 60, during a "senior moment." Brown got the ages wrong for every (!) white person except himself, the names wrong on most, and turned my 12-year-old great-grandfather into a girl. Brown's Slave Schedules are impossible to connect with individual slaves known to be present. The totals for white people and black people were correct, but little else. This brickwall baffled two generations of family researchers. (Ask me about the most unusual Census entry I've seen. Subject matter may offend.) Bruce D. Liddell, BDLiddell@yahoo.com Birmingham AL, 31-Aug-2003 __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com