The Eleventh Census of the United States was made on June 1, 1890 [1] . For the first time in the world, census data were processed using a tabulator . The information obtained from the census indicated that the spread of the population led to the disappearance of the border of the advancement of settlers in the USA. Most of the 1890 census materials were destroyed in a fire in 1921.
Content
Questions
The following information about people was collected during the census: [2]
- address of residence
- number of families in the house
- number of people living in the house
- name
- whether the interviewee participated in the Civil War , on whose side, or is the interviewee a widow of a participant in that war
- Race: White , Black , Mulatto , Quarteron , Octaron , Chinese , Japanese or Native American
- floor
- age
- marital status
- married (married) duringcensus year
- number of children born (at mother), number of living children
- place of birth and parents
- if not born in the USA - the number of years of stay in the country
- was (a) naturalized
- occupation
- months without work during census year
- can read and write
- Does he speak English, if not - the language or dialect that he speaks
- suffers from acute or chronic diseases, with names and duration of illness
- Is the defendant (s), prisoner (s), homeless child or beggar (s)
- whether the house is rented or owned by the head or family member; if owns - is the house free from mortgage [ specify ]
- if the farmer, whether the farm leases or owns the head or family member; if owns, is the farm free from mortgage; if rented - farm owner mailbox
Methodology
The 1890 census was the first census to be compiled using methods invented by Herman Hollerith . Data was entered on a machine-readable medium ( punched card ) and processed using a tabulator [3] [4] . This technology has reduced the processing time of the census results from 8 years (1880 census) to 1 year [4] . Data on the number of people living in the USA - 62 947 714 people [5] - were published after 6 weeks of processing. The public reacted to the message with disbelief, since it was believed that in reality this number should be at least 75,000,000 .
Important Revealed Facts
The census revealed a decrease in the number of Native Americans from 400,764 in 1850 (according to the census of that year) to 248,253 in 1890 [6] .
The census showed that the frontier no longer exists [7] , and that the Census Bureau will no longer be able to track the migration of Americans to the western United States. Until the census of 1880 and including it, in the USA there was a border of resettlement (frontier). By 1890, isolated settlements had entered uninhabited territory to such an extent that the border could hardly be distinguished. This prompted Frederick Turner to create the “ Border Theory ” [8] .
Census data availability
The source data for the 1890 census is no longer available. Almost all residents' lists were damaged in a fire in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington in 1921. About 25% of the materials were destroyed, 50% was damaged by fire, smoke and water, in which most of the documents were kept all night due to inaction of archive workers [1] . This incident became a prerequisite for the creation of the National Archive [1] [9] . In December 1932, following the instructions of the procedure, the chief clerk of the Census Bureau sent the director of the Library of Congress a list of papers for destruction containing 1890 census tables. The Bureau sent a request to the Director for the allocation of historically important documents for preservation, but he did not recognize the census documents as important. Congress approved the destruction of records from this list on February 21, 1933, and the remaining source records of that census were destroyed by 1934-1935. Other censuses for which some of the information was lost - censuses of 1800 and 1810 .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 Blake, Kellee First in the Path of the Firemen: The Fate of the 1890 Population Census, Part 1 . Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration (Spring 1996). Date of treatment April 13, 2013. Archived September 3, 2013.
- ↑ Library Bibliography Bulletin 88, New York State Census Records, 1790-1925 44 (p. 50 of PDF). New York State Library (October 1981). Date of treatment December 15, 2008. Archived January 30, 2009.
- ↑ Truesdell, Leon E. The Development of Punch Card Tabulation in the Bureau of the Census: 1890-1940. - US GPO, 1965.
- ↑ 1 2 Hollerith's Electric Sorting and Tabulating Machine, ca. 1895 from the American Memory archives of the Library of Congress
- ↑ Population and Area (Historical Censuses) (PDF). United States Census Bureau. Date of treatment June 20, 2008. Archived June 24, 2008.
- ↑ Dippie, Brian W. The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and US Indian Policy. - Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982. - P. ??. - ISBN 0-8195-5056-6 . . US domestic policy, coupled with wars, genocide, famine [ specify ] , diseases, declining birth rates and exogamy (children from interracial marriages more often identified themselves as white) caused a decrease in the number of US domestic policies 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. Chalk, Frank. The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies / Frank Chalk, Kurt Jonassohn. - New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990 .-- ISBN 0-300-04446-1 .
- ↑ Porter, Robert. "Progress of the Nation", in "Report on Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part 1" / Robert Porter, Henry Gannett, William Hunt. - Bureau of the Census, 1895. - P. xviii-xxxiv.
- ↑ Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Early Writings of Frederick Jackson Turner Compiled by Everett E. Edwards. - Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969.
- ↑ Blake, Kellee First in the Path of the Firemen: The Fate of the 1890 Population Census, Part 1 . Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration (Spring 1996). Date of treatment April 13, 2013. Archived September 3, 2013.