The 1890 United States census was taken beginning June 2, 1890. The census determined the resident population of the United States to be 62,979,766, an increase of 25.5 percent over the 50,189,209 persons enumerated during the 1880 census. The data reported that the distribution of the population had resulted in the disappearance of the American frontier.
This was the first census in which a majority of states recorded populations of over one million and the first in which three cities, New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, recorded populations of over one million. The census also saw Chicago rise in rank to the nation's second-most populous city, a position it would hold until Los Angeles, the 57th-most populous city as of 1890, supplanted it in 1990. This was the first U.S. census to use machines to tabulate the collected data.
Most of the 1890 census materials were destroyed on January 10, 1921, when the Commerce Department building caught fire, and in the subsequent disposal of the remaining damaged records.
mother of how many children, and number now living
place of birth of person, and their father and mother
if foreign-born, number of years in U.S.
whether naturalized
whether naturalization papers have been taken out
profession, trade or occupation
months unemployed during census year
ability to read and write
ability to speak English, and, if unable, language or dialect spoken
whether suffering from acute or chronic disease, with name of disease and length of time afflicted
whether defective in mind, sight, hearing or speech, or whether crippled, maimed or deformed, with name of defect
whether a prisoner, convict, homeless child, or pauper
home rented, or owned by head or member of family, and, if owned, whether free from mortgage
if farmer, whether farm is rented, or owned by head or member of family; if owned, whether free from mortgage; if rented, post office box of owner
Methodology
[edit]A Hollerith tabulator that has been modified for the first 1890 census tabulation; the punched-card reader was removed, replaced by a simple keyboard.[2]: 61
The 1890 census was the first to be compiled using methods invented by Herman Hollerith and was overseen by Superintendents Robert P. Porter (1889–1893) and Carroll D. Wright (1893–1897). Data was entered on a machine readable medium (punched cards) and tabulated by machine.[2] Changes from the 1880 census included the larger population, the number of data items to be collected from individuals, the Census Bureau headcount, the volume of scheduled publications, and the use of Hollerith's electromechanical tabulators. The net effect of these changes was to reduce 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][2]: 61 The public reaction to this tabulation was disbelief, as it was widely believed that the "right answer" was at least 75,000,000.[5]
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.
By 1890, settlement in the American West had reached sufficient population density that the frontier line had disappeared. For the 1890 census, the Census Bureau released a bulletin declaring the closing of the frontier, stating: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports."[8]
Data availability
[edit]Aftermath of the 1921 fire which destroyed almost the entirety of the 1890 census records
The original data for the 1890 census is mostly unavailable. The population schedules were damaged in a fire in the basement of the U.S. Department of 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. Few sets of microdata from the 1890 census survive.[11]Aggregate data for small areas, together with compatible cartographic boundary files, can be downloaded from the National Historical Geographic Information System.
^ abcTruesdell, Leon E. (1965). The Development of Punch Card Tabulation in the Bureau of the Census: 1890–1940. US GPO.
^Report of the Commissioner of Labor In Charge of The Eleventh Census to the Secretary of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1895. Washington, DC: United States Government Publishing Office. July 29, 1895. hdl:2027/osu.32435067619882. OCLC867910652. p. 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
^Austrian, Geoffrey D. (1982). Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information Processing. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 85–86. ISBN0-231-05146-8.
^Dippie, Brian W. (1982). The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press. p. ??. ISBN0-8195-5056-6. 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. Chalk, Frank; Jonassohn, Kurt (1990). The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN0-300-04446-1.
^Porter, Robert; Gannett, Henry; Hunt, William (1895). "Progress of the Nation", in "Report on Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part 1". Bureau of the Census. pp. xviii–xxxiv.
25.5%)
New York
Pennsylvania
Illinois
Ohio
Missouri
Massachusetts
Texas
Indiana
Michigan
Iowa
Kentucky
Georgia
Tennessee
Wisconsin
Virginia
North Carolina
Alabama
New Jersey
Kansas
Minnesota
Mississippi
California
South Carolina
Arkansas
Louisiana
Nebraska
Maryland
West Virginia
Connecticut
Maine
Colorado
Florida
New Hampshire
Washington
South Dakota
Rhode Island
Vermont
Oregon
Oklahoma
District of Columbia[12]
Utah
North Dakota
Delaware
New Mexico
Montana
Idaho
Arizona
Wyoming
Nevada
Alaska
Wikisource)
