1890 United States Census
The Eleventh United States Census was taken beginning June 2, 1890. The data was tabulated by machine for the first time. The data reported that the distribution of the population had resulted in the disappearance of the American frontier. Most of the 1890 census materials were destroyed in a 1921 fire.
Contents
Census questions
The 1890 census collected the following information:[1]
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Methodology
The 1890 census was the first to be compiled using methods invented by Herman Hollerith. Data was entered on a machine readable medium, punched cards, and tabulated by machine.[2] The net effect of the many changes from the 1880 census: the larger population, the data items to be collected, the Census Bureau headcount, the scheduled publications, and the use of Hollerith's electromechanical tabulators, was to reduced the time required to process the census from eight years for the 1880 census to six years for the 1890 census.[3] The total population of 62,947,714, the family, or rough, count, was announced after only six weeks of processing (punched cards were not used for this tabulation).[4][5]
Significant findings
The United States census of 1890 showed a total of 248,253 Native Americans living in America, down from 400,764 Native Americans identified in the census of 1850.[6]
The 1890 census announced that the frontier region of the United States no longer existed,[7] and that the Census Bureau would no longer track the westward migration of the U.S. population. Up to and including the 1880 census, the country had a frontier of settlement. By 1890, isolated bodies of settlement had broken into the unsettled area to the extent that there was hardly a frontier line. This prompted Frederick Jackson Turner to develop his Frontier Thesis.[8]
Data availability
The original data for the 1890 Census is no longer available. Almost all the population schedules were damaged in a fire in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington, D.C. in 1921. Some 25% of the materials were presumed destroyed and another 50% damaged by smoke and water (although the actual damage may have been closer to 15–25%). The damage to the records led to an outcry for a permanent National Archives.[9][10] In December 1932, following standard Federal record-keeping procedures, the Chief Clerk of the Bureau of the Census sent the Librarian of Congress a list of papers to be destroyed, including the original 1890 census schedules. The Librarian was asked by the Bureau to identify any records which should be retained for historical purposes, but the Librarian did not accept the census records. Congress authorized destruction of that list of records on February 21, 1933, and the surviving original 1890 census records were destroyed by government order by 1934 or 1935. The other censuses for which some information has been lost are the 1800 and 1810 enumerations.[citation needed]
No microdata from the 1890 census survive, but aggregate data for small areas, together with compatible cartographic boundary files, can be downloaded from the National Historical Geographic Information System.
State rankings
| Rank | State | Population |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | New York | 6,003,174 |
| 02 | Pennsylvania | 5,258,113 |
| 03 | Illinois | 3,826,352 |
| 04 | Ohio | 3,672,329 |
| 05 | Missouri | 2,679,185 |
| 06 | Massachusetts | 2,238,947 |
| 07 | Texas | 2,235,527 |
| 08 | Indiana | 2,192,404 |
| 09 | Michigan | 2,093,890 |
| 10 | Iowa | 1,912,297 |
| 11 | Kentucky | 1,858,635 |
| 12 | Georgia | 1,837,353 |
| 13 | Tennessee | 1,767,518 |
| 14 | Wisconsin | 1,693,330 |
| 15 | Virginia | 1,655,980 |
| 16 | North Carolina | 1,617,949 |
| 17 | Alabama | 1,513,401 |
| 18 | New Jersey | 1,444,933 |
| 19 | Kansas | 1,428,108 |
| 20 | Minnesota | 1,310,283 |
| 21 | Mississippi | 1,289,600 |
| 22 | California | 1,213,398 |
| 23 | South Carolina | 1,151,149 |
| 24 | Arkansas | 1,128,211 |
| 25 | Louisiana | 1,118,588 |
| 26 | Nebraska | 1,062,656 |
| 27 | Maryland | 1,042,390 |
| 28 | West Virginia | 762,794 |
| 29 | Connecticut | 746,258 |
| 30 | Maine | 661,086 |
| 31 | Colorado | 413,249 |
| 32 | Florida | 391,422 |
| 33 | New Hampshire | 376,530 |
| 34 | Washington | 357,232 |
| 35 | South Dakota | 348,600 |
| 36 | Rhode Island | 345,506 |
| 37 | Vermont | 332,422 |
| 38 | Oregon | 317,704 |
| 39 | North Dakota | 190,983 |
| 40 | Delaware | 168,493 |
| 41 | Montana | 142,924 |
| 42 | Nevada | 47,355 |
References
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<references />, or <references group="..." />External links
- Mayo-Smith, Richmond (1891), "The Eleventh Census of the United States". In: The Economic Journal (EJ), Vol. 1, p. 43 - 58 (in
Wikisource) - Historic US Census data from the U.S. Census Bureau website
- Hollerith 1890 Census Tabulator by Columbia University
- "The Fate of the 1890 Population Census" from the National Archives website
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Page 9: "You may confidently look for the rapid reduction of the force of this office after the 1st of October, and the entire cessation of clerical work during the present calendar year. ... The condition of the work of the Census Division and the condition of the final reports show clearly that the work of the Eleventh Census will be completed at least two years earlier than was the work of the Tenth Census." — Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor in Charge
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Truesdell, Leon E. (1965) The Development of Punch Card Tabulation in the Bureau of the Census 1890-1940, US GPO, p.61
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. The data yielded by this census provided strong evidence that the United States' policies towards Native Americans had had a significant impact on the enumeration of the census in the second half of the 19th century. US domestic policy combined with wars, genocide, famine, disease, a declining birthrate, and exogamy (with the children of biracial families declaring themselves to be white rather than Indian) accounted for the decrease in the enumeration of the census. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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