1870 Federal Census Polk County, Oregon (Transcriber's Notes)

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Abstracted by M. Constance Guardino III With Rev. Marilyn A. Riedel 
from public records.  Edited and formatted by Maggie Stewart, August 2005.  
Permission to use from web site in 2002 by M. Constance Guardino III.

This transcription was proofread by Michelle Pesola.

Both above notices must remain when copied or downloaded.
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NOTE:  For more information on Polk County, Oregon,  
       Please visit the Polk County, ORGenWeb page at
       http://www.rootsweb.com/~orpolk/  
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This work follows all guidelines of the USGW Census Project,
http://www.usgwcensus.org/.
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This is the 1870 Federal Census for Polk County, Oregon
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1870 Polk County Oregon Census A-M 
http://users.wi.net/~census/lesson27.html
1870 Polk County Oregon Census N-Z 
http://users.wi.net/~census/lesson28.html
Compiled By M. Constance Guardino III 
With Rev. Marilyn A. Riedel 
January 2002 Maracon Productions 
History of the US Census 
 
The first US Federal Census was taken as the result of the Constitution, Article 
1, Section 2 which states:

 Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States 
which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, 
which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, 
including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not 
taxed, three-fifths of all other persons. The actual enumeration shall be made 
within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the US, and within 
every subsequent term of the years, in such manner as they shall by law direct.

With this provision the US became the first country to have, by law, a periodic 
enumeration of its inhabitants. The Constitution did not provide for information 
beyond statistical data for each state.
 Fortunately, the Act which specifically called for a census enumeration went 
further. This Act was approved March 1, 1790 during the second session of the 
First Congress. It required that a marshal be appointed for each state, who was 
empowered to appoint as many assistants as necessary. By this Act the marshals 
were not only required to enumerate the number of inhabitants within each 
district but to distinguish the free population from the slave population, and 
to exclude Indians not taxed. This was sufficient information to meet the 
Constitutional requirements, but the Act also required a distinction between 
sex, free persons of color, free males of 16 years and upward, and most 
importantly the names of the heads of each family.
 The task of taking the enumeration was to begin on the first Monday in August 
1790 and close within nine months, at which time the marshals were to make their 
returns. To avoid the problems that arise from making an accurate count of a 
mobile population the Act stated that each individual was to be enumerated in 
the home of ?his usual place of abode? on the first Monday in August 1790. In 
the case of persons having no settled place of residence the Act stated that 
they should be listed in the division where they happened to be on the first day 
of August.
 The Act also stipulated that

each and every person more than 16 years of age, whether the head of a family or 
not, [was] to render a true account, to the best of his knowledge, of every 
person belonging to the family in which he usually resided, if so required by 
the assistant of his division, under penalty of forfeiting $20.

 Difficulty immediately came to the fore with the passage of this Act. America 
was on the fringes of a vast wilderness and the great majority of the population 
lived in rural areas. Consequently, the assistants had to travel over long 
distances with few roads and bridges, in forests, swamps, etc. to make an 
accurate return. Often the population did not cooperate. Many people ?imagined 
some scheme for increasing taxation, and were inclined to be cautious lest they 
should reveal too much of their own affairs.? There was opposition on religious 
grounds and it was feared that it would cause divided displeasure. Other 
problems were caused by the question of civil boundaries, and ?even those of 
counties, were in many cases unknown or not defined at all.?
 Each assistant was to make two additional copies of his return and post them in 
two public places for the inspection of the local inhabitants. He was then to 
forward the remaining copy to the respective marshal who was in turn to total 
each description of persons and send these totals (aggregate amounts) to the 
President. The returns were then to be turned over to the clerks of the 
respective US District Courts, who were directed to carefully preserve them. It 
is assumed that these copies remained in the District Courts until a resolution, 
passed May 28, 1830, directed the District Court clerks to forward the returns 
to Washington.

It is known that the 1790 schedules for Rhode Island were forwarded to 
Washington on June 22, 1830, as a result of the May 28 Resolution. Presumably 
other extant population schedules, 1970-1820, were forwarded at about the same 
time, but no documentation of such action has been found.

 The size of sheets used to take this first census varied greatly as no forms 
were provided nor were instructions given concerning size, type of paper, etc. 
Usually the marshals and assistants ruled columns in ink of each page and filled 
in the headings of each column. Apparently the only instructions the marshals 
were given were the following:

 Schedule of the whole number of persons within the Division allotted to

? Names of heads of families
? Free white males of 16 and upwards including heads of families
? Free white males under 16
? Free while females, including heads of families
? All other free persons
? Slaves

 Enumerations were taken in the 13 original states viz.: Massachusetts, New 
Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Enumerations 
were also taken for Vermont which became a state in 1791; Maine which was a part 
of Massachusetts, Kentucky which was a part of Virginia, and the present states 
of Alabama and Mississippi which were parts of Georgia. There was also a census 
of the present state of Tennessee which was a part of North Carolina in 1790 but 
was organized as the Southwest Territory soon thereafter.
 The present states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well 
as a part of Minnesota were known as the Northwest Territory, but there seems to 
have been little effort to take a census there. In the printed enumeration 
totals, blanks were provided for the Northwest Territory but they were not 
filled in.
 By the Act of March 1, 1790 the marshals were to transmit the aggregate amounts 
to the President before September 1, 1791; later legislation extended the time 
allowed to the states of Vermont and South Carolina. In the case of Vermont the 
enumeration was to begin the first Monday in April 1791, and close within five 
calendar months. In the case of South Carolina the time of completion was 
extended to March 1, 1792. Rhode Island, by the date of the Act of March 1, 
1790, had not accepted the Constitution, and thus was not a part of the Union. 
When it did accept the Constitution, legislation had to be enacted to take a 
census. This Act was dated July 5, 1790.
 In the congressional appropriations bill for the year 1907 we find the 
following paragraphs:

 The Director of the Census is hereby authorized and directed to publish, in a 
permanent form, by counties and minor civil division, the names of the heads of 
families returned at the first census of the United States in 1790; and to sell 
said publications, the proceeds thereof to be covered into the treasury of the 
United States, to be deposited to the credit of miscellaneous receipts on 
account of proceeds of sales of government property:
 Provided, that no expense shall be incurred hereunder additional to 
appropriations for the census office for printing...

 The initial appropriations apparently were not enough to cover the cost for 
printing all of the 1790 census but in the next few years all known schedules 
were printed.
 Unfortunately, some of the early census schedules had been lost or destroyed 
and could not be found by the census bureau in 1907. Those missing are for the 
states of Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, Tennessee (Southwest 
Territory), and Virginia. In the introductory remarks of each printed 1790 
census schedule is found the statement that the originals of the missing 
schedules were "destroyed when the British burned the capitol at Washington 
during the War of 1812." This is quite unlikely because the schedules most 
likely remained in the hands of the US District Courts until the Resolution of 
March 28, 1830.
 For the states for which schedules are missing the government attempted to fill 
in with substitutes from state and county tax lists. This was done for the state 
of Virginia with some defects. The introduction of the 1908 publication entitled 
Heads of Families at the First Census: 1790 Virginia states:

 The loss of Virginia's original schedules for the first and second censuses is 
so unfortunate that every endeavor has been made to secure data that would in 
some measure fill in the vacancy. The only records that could be secured were 
some manuscript lists of state enumerations made in the years 1782, 1783, 1784, 
and 1785; also the tax lists of Greenbrier County from 1783 to 1786. These 
documents were on file in the State Library and could not be removed therefrom. 
Through the courtesy of the State Librarian and the members of the Library 
Board, an Act was passed by the legislature allowing the Census Office to 
withdraw the lists for the purpose of making copies and publishing then names, 
in lieu of the federal census returns. The counties for which the names of the 
heads of families are returned on the state census lists are 39 in number, and 
contain in 1790 a population of 370,000; 41 counties with 377,000 population are 
lacking; this publication covers therefore, only about one half of the state.

 The Virginia tax lists publication was the only one undertaken by the census 
bureau. There have been publications that have also attempted to complete this 
project of supplying substitutes to the 1790 census through indexes to tax 
lists. For the missing portion of the state of Virginia there is Virginia Tax 
Payers 1782-1784 by Augusta B. Fothergill and John Mark Naugle; For Kentucky 
there is First Census of Kentucky 1790 compiled by Charles B. Heinemann. For 
Delaware tax list of 1790 was compiled by Leon De Valinger and published in the 
National Genealogical Society Quarterly beginning in 1948, Vol. 36, p. 95 and 
subsequent volumes. For Tennessee we have only a few good tax lists available 
but those that are available are printed in Mary Barnett Curtis' Early East 
Tennessee Tax Lists and Petitions which covers the years 1788 through 1823 and 
in Pollyanna Creekmore's Early East Tennessee Tax Payers. The tax lists for 
Georgia are also very incomplete but some of those available are published in 
Early Tax Digests of Georgia by Ruth Blair. Only the state of New Jersey has no 
tax substitutes for the 1790 time period, but there is a military "census" which 
may be helpful. It is indexed in Revolutionary Census of New Jersey 1773-1784, 
by Kenn Stryker-Rodda.
 As a final note, recently, a Spanish census for 1790 for the New Mexico area 
has been found. The originals are located in the New Mexico State Record Center 
Historical Service Division in Santa Fe, and are published in Spanish and 
Mexican Colonial Censuses of New Mexico: 1790, 1823, 1845, translated and 
compiled for the other Spanish Possessions in North American such as Louisiana, 
California, and Texas. If they do exist it is suspected that they will be found 
in the church records of the various parishes.
 Most of the legislation that brought about the taking of the later censuses was 
based upon the Act of March 1, 1790. There was a gradual expansion of 
information required with each succeeding census. By 1810 there was an attempt 
to take a manufacturing census which was expanded in 1810.

Beyond HISland

 "HISland" is a term coined by feminist writer Susan Armitage at the first 
Woman's West Conference in 1983 to describe the usual Western histories 'where 
seldom is heard a discouraging word, and never a woman's voice'... where under 
perpetually cloudless Western skies, a cast of heroic characters engage in 
dramatic combat, sometimes with nature, sometimes with each other... These 
diverse heroes are mountain men, cowboys, Indians, soldiers, farmers, miners, 
and desperadoes, but they share one distinguishing characteristic?they are all 
men, and mostly white except for native peoples. If persons of color enter the 
story, they were most likely Plains Indians, far off in the horizon, swooping 
down to be slaughtered.
 If women entered the story, it would likely be in a saloon or brothel, or as 
hazy, background support figures, voiceless or passive, and usually white... But 
a woman of color would undoubtedly include an Indian princess, like Sacajawea, 
merely a prop for an "inevitable Euro-American westward expansion of manifest 
destiny."
 An accurate western history would involve all the actors in their 
relationships, including women and men of "all races, ethnicities, classes and 
genders." (Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage, editors Writing the Range: 
Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 
1997), 3, 6

Who's Really Running the Farm?

 The 1870 Census for Benton and Lincoln counties lists most women as 
"homemakers," derailing the fact that, from time immemorial, women have always 
run farms for or with men. Therefore, I have listed women as counterparts to 
their husbands' occupations in order to concretize this fact. The following 
article by Doris Weatherford clarifies my premise and justification for taking 
such liberty with data as crucial as the census:

 Though the word "farmer" connotes a male image, women have farmed since the 
dawn of time?indeed, primitive women doubtless preceded men as tillers of the 
soil, while males continued to hunt for food rather than grow it. From the 
beginnings of the US, too, women have worked on farms.
 Early English colonists included women in several aspects of agriculture, 
especially dairy and poultry production. From colonial times on, countless women 
worked as milkmaids; it was they who tended and milked billions of cows, 
strained the milk and separated it from the cream, churned the butter, and made 
the cheese. It was women who hatched most chicks, fed and raised them, and then 
either gathered and sold their eggs or butchered and cooked the roosters. For 
much of American history, the "butter and egg" income of farms was commonly 
dismissed as the "pin money" of women?but for millions of families, it was often 
the only cash income available.
 In the Southern plantation economy, black women worked in the fields along with 
black men, doing all the exhausting labor of planting, cultivating, and 
harvesting. Even after emancipation, the grange work done by black women saw 
little change, as an essentially feudal system continued with sharecropping, and 
the agricultural labor of women as well as men was essential to support 
families. While anglo Southern women were less often seen in the fields, they 
too chopped and picked cotton, and handled as well the work of henhouse and 
pigpen. Moreover, agricultural knowledge was assumed even among wealthy women, 
for they often acted as farm managers; the men who ranked as military and 
political leaders were as likely to be absent as not, and many women emulated 
Martha Washington, for example, in directing the agricultural systems that they 
called home.
 When the great waves of immigration came before and after the Civil War, other 
types of women also appeared. Especially among the Slavs of Eastern Europe, 
women commonly had histories as virtual beasts of burden in plowing and other 
laborious work. Women from Scandinavia and Northwestern Europe did less heavy 
tasks, but they too were accustomed to farm work. Soon, however, immigrant women 
realized that anglo American women of this era were more closely confined to 
gardens and farmyards, and a sure sign of the assimilation of a prairie family 
was when its women no longer worked in the fields.
 Nevertheless, women and especially girls were called upon for harvesting corn 
and other emergency field work until mechanization diminished the labor 
necessary to large-scale farming. Meanwhile, women from Southern Europe 
developed truck farming traditions in America; on small farms near large cities, 
Italians especially specialized in the production of labor-intensive crops from 
artichokes to zucchini. Yet while women grew and even peddled these crops to 
American householders, "farmer" remained a term that somehow was exclusively 
male. That was the case, too, on the large farms out on the prairie, even though 
land claims clearly record that homesteading women were not terribly unusual.
 Farming remained an enterprise best accomplished by a couple whose divisions of 
labor came to be seen as natural, and almost every granger sought a wife. She 
would be expected to work in and out of the farmhouse from before dawn until 
after dark, with no money to count as her own until the reform of married 
women?s property rights. Even in the 20th Century, women worked all their lives 
on farms without any assurance of ownership in those states that favored the 
inheritance rights of sons over the dower rights of widows. Yet many widows and 
other women who found themselves in possession of land without male partnership 
nonetheless found that they could successfully farm, for it was the work that 
they knew best. These women seldom sought recognition in their own right, 
however, and even the labor emergencies of WWII that brought the women?s land 
army and millions of other women into agriculture did little to diminish the 
idea that farmers were inherently male. Not until very recently have women 
farmers and ranchers finally begun to organize themselves. (Doris Weatherford, 
American Women's History (New York: Prentice Hall General Reference, 1994), 125, 
126)

"The Filthiest Work in Creation"

 ? England: In Great Britain, wives are still occasionally led to the market by 
a halter around the neck to be sold by the husband to the highest bidder. The 
Worcester Chronicle of recent date (1881) gives an account of a "Wife Sale" in 
England. Thomas Middleton delivered up his wife Mary M. to Philip Rostius, and 
sold her for one shilling and a quart of ale, and parted from her solely and 
absolutely for life, "not to trouble one another for life." Philip Rostius made 
his mark as a witness. A second witness was S.H. Shore, Crown Inn, Trim Street. 
(Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, editors., 
History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I (New York: Fowler & Wells, Publishing, 1881 
), p. 792)
 Scantily clothed English women work by the side of nude men in coal pits, and, 
harnessed to trucks, perform the severe labor of dragging coal up inclined 
planes to the mouth of the pit, a work testing every muscle and straining every 
nerve, and so severe that the stoutest men shrink from it. (Ibidem: 793)
 ? Ireland: Irish women are patient drudges, staggering over the bogs with heavy 
creels of turf on their backs, or climbing the slopes from the seashore, or 
undertaking long journeys on foot into the market towns, bearing weighty hampers 
of farm produce.
 In 1880, a young girl named Catherine Cafferby, of Belmullet, in County 
Mayo?the pink of her father's family?fled from the "domestic service" of a 
landlord as absolute as Lord Leitrim, the moment the poor creature discovered 
what the "service" customarily involved. The great man had the audacity to 
invoke the law to compel her to return, as she had not given statutable notice 
of her flight. She clung to the door-post of her father's cabin; she told aloud 
the story of her terror, and called on God and man to save her. Her tears, her 
shrieks, her piteous pleadings were all in vain. The petty sessions bench 
ordered her back to the landlord's "service," or else pay £5, or two weeks in 
jail. This is not a story of Bulgaria under Murad IV, but of Ireland in the 
reign of the present sovereign. That peasant girl went to jail to save her 
chastity. If she did not spend a fortnight in the cells, it was only because 
friends of outraged virtue, justice, and humanity paid the fine when the story 
reached the outer World. (Ibidem: 794)
 ? Germany: In Germany... woman carries a hod of mortar up steep ladders to the 
top of the highest buildings; or, with a coal basket strapped to her back, 
climbs three or four flights of stairs, her husband remaining at the foot, pipe 
in mouth, awaiting her return to load the hod or basket, that she may make 
another ascent, the payment for her work going into the husband's hands for his 
uncontrolled use.
 Or mayhap this German wife works in the field harnessed by the side of a cow, 
while her husband-master holds the plow and wields the whip. Or, perhaps, 
harnessed with a dog, she serves the morning's milk, or drags her husband home 
from work at night. (Ibidem: 792, 793)
 ? Upper Alps: Alpine farmers, though by no means wealthy, live like lords in 
their houses, while the heaviest portion of agricultural labors devolves on the 
wife. It is not uncommon thing to see a woman yoked to the plow with an ass, 
while her husband guides it. An Alpine farmer accounts it an act of politeness 
to lend his wife to a neighbor who has too much work, and the neighbor in return 
lends his wife for a few days? labor whenever requested. (Ibidem: 793)
 ? France: Women act as porters, carrying the heaviest burdens and performing 
the most repulsive labors at the docks, while eating food of so poor a quality 
that the lessening stature of the population daily shows the result. (Ibidem: 
793)
 ? Holland: In Holland and Prussia women drag barges on the canal, and perform 
the most repulsive agricultural duties. (Ibidem: 793)
 ? Russia: A peasant in the village of Zelova Baltia, having reason to doubt the 
fidelity of his wife, deliberately harnessed her to a cart in company with a 
mare?a species of double harness, for which the lady was probably unprepared 
when she took the nuptial vow. He then got into the cart in company with a 
friend, and drove the ill-assorted team some 16 versts (nearly 11 English 
miles), without sparing the whip-cord. When he returned from his excursion he 
shaved the unlucky woman's head, tarred and feathered her, and turned her out of 
doors. She naturally sought refuge and consolation from her parish priest; but 
he sent her back to her lord and master, prescribing further flagellation. An 
appeal to justice by the poor woman and her relatives resulted in a nonsuit, and 
any recourse to a higher court will probably terminate in the same manner. 
(Ibidem: 773, 774)
 ? Montenegro: Women form the beasts of burden in war in Montenegro, and are 
counted among the "animals" belonging to the prince. (Ibidem: 793)
 ? Italy: In that land which for centuries led the world in art, women work in 
squalor and degradation under the shadow of Saint Peter's and the Vatican for 
four-pence a day. (Ibidem: 793)
 ? America: Under the Christianity of the 19th Century, until within 20 years 
(1860), women worked on rice and cotton plantations waist-deep in water, or 
under a burning sun performed the tasks demanded by a cruel master, at whose 
hands she also suffered the same kind or moral degradation exacted of the serf 
under feudalism.
 In some portions of Christendom the "service" of young girls today implies 
their sacrifice to the Molock of man's unrestrained passions. (Ibidem: 773, 774)