1890 Census

Kathryn Seiley

Enumerators generally completed their counting by July 1 of 1890, and the U.S. population was returned at nearly 63 million (62,979,766). Complaints about accuracy and undercounting poured into the census office, as did demands for recounts. The 1890 census seemed mired in fraud and political intrigue. New York State officials were accused of bolstering census numbers, and the intense business competition between Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, resulted in no fewer than nineteen indictments against Minneapolis businessmen for allegedly adding more than 1,100 phony names to the census. Perhaps not surprisingly, the St. Paul businessmen brought the federal court complaint against the Minneapolis businessmen.(5)

Order for Destruction

Even after the outcry in 1921, thirteen years later the Census Bureau destroyed the remaining 1890 schedules.

 

 

First in the Path of the Firemen"
The Fate of the 1890 Population Census, Part 2

 

Confederates and veterans of earlier wars often show up on the special schedule for Union veterans. (NARA, Records of the Veterans Administration, RG 15)

 

Often confused with the 1890 census, and more often overlooked or misjudged as useless, are nearly seventy-five thousand special 1890 schedules enumerating Union veterans and widows of Union veterans.(27) Nearly all of these schedules for the states of Alabama through Kansas and approximately half of those for Kentucky appear to have been destroyed before transfer of the remaining schedules to the National Archives in 1943. Nearly all, but fragments for some of these states were accessioned by the National Archives as bundle 198. Many reference sources state or speculate that the missing schedules were lost in the 1921 fire. The administrative record, however, does not support this conclusion.

 

At the completion of the 1890 enumeration, the special schedules were returned with a preliminary count of 1,099,668 Union survivors and 163,176 widows. A large number of schedules were found to be incomplete, and many veterans had been overlooked. The Census Bureau sent thousands of letters and published inquiries in hundreds of newspapers hoping to acquire missing data. As appropriate, corrections and additions were made to the schedules. The initial work of examining, verifying, and classifying the information was suspended in June 1891, awaiting congressional appropriation for publication of the veterans' volumes.(39) During that same period, anticipating the publication, the bureau began transcribing information from the schedules onto a printed card for each surviving veteran or widow, later to be arranged by state and organization. No fewer than 304,607 cards were completed before this work was also halted. These cards do not seem to be extant, nor does there appear to be a final record of their disposition. Some cards may have been placed in individual service files.(40)

 

The Washington Herald and other newspapers reported the events of January 10, 1921, and decried the loss of valuable records.

 

45. Microfilmed copies are available via the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and the California section of the State Library in Sacramento. Wendy L. Elliott, "'Great Register Project' Aims to Replace Missing 1890 Census," Federation of Genealogical Societies Forum 4 (Summer 1992): 3 4; Alice Eichholz, ed., Redbook: American State, County, and Town Sources (1989), p. 32; Ann S. Lainhart, State Census Records (1992).

 

 

https://www.archives.gov/publications

 

Published in U S Legacies Magazine June 2004