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Volunteer Information Subdistricts and Enumeration Districts
SCC Info | Transcriber Info Index
As mandated by the Constitution (article I, section 2), an act of March 1, 1790
(1 Stat. 101) provided for the 1st Census and, with minor modifications, governed
each census through 1850. The term "Census Office" refers to temporary staffs
established to administer the decennial censuses, 1790-1900. Censuses were
taken by U.S. district marshals, 1790-1870; and by enumerators under supervisors
responsible through the Superintendent of the Census to the Secretary of the Interior,
1880-1900. Extant administrative records begin with those of the 4th Census (1820).
Census schedules, 1790-1950, are described UNDER 29.8.
Every 10 years since 1790, the U.S. Government has taken a census to enumerate the
population so as to apportion seats in the House of Representatives. Census enumerators
canvass their districts house-to-house, collecting information about individuals and
households on forms called population schedules.
There are hundreds of thousands of pages of Census population schedules in the custody
of the National Archives. The National Archives holds original and microfilm copies of enumeration
schedules from 1790 to 1870 and microfilm copies only of the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 schedules.
The microfilm copies of these schedules are available to researchers. Most of the 1890 census was
destroyed by fire in 1921, but microfilm of surviving fragments is also open for examination. To
protect the privacy of people enumerated during a census, the records are closed to research for 72
years. The release date for the 1930 census will be 2002. The schedules are part of the Records of the
Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29.
From The SOURCE A Guidebook of American Genealogy (Revised Edition: Edited
by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, Ancestry, Published 1997)
page 104:
"In the days before regular mail service, government representatives
conducted door-to-door canvasses of their appointed districts. Supervisors
subdivided districts using existing local boundaries. The town, township,
military district, ward, and precinct most often constituted one or more
enumeration districts.
Boundaries of towns and other minor civil divisions, and in some cases of
counties were ill defined, so enumerators were frequently uncertain whether a
family resided in their own or an adjoining district. For this reason, it is not
unusual to find individuals and families listed twice in the census and others
missed entirely."
Subdistricts:
In most years and in most places, the census was taken on a county
by county basis. In a few states and territories, such as Arizona,
Louisiana, Orleans, South Carolina, and others, the county divisions
have been known by other names. In other places in some years,
counties have not existed or have not been used, so other means of
dividing up the state or territory have been used. Common examples
of these names are Beat, Division, Judicial District, District, etc.
Within the county or other major civil division many subdivisions
have been used. These incluse Township, Precinct, City, Town,
Village, District, Division, and Ward. From 1880 on, enumeration
has been done by ED, or enumeration district.
EDs, strictly defined, were not used until the 1880 census. The early
censuses used the term subdivision to refer to part of a supervisor's
or marshal's division or district. Subdivisions in the early censuses
comprised towns, townships, or other units comparable to MCDs
(Marshall's Census Divisions or Districts).
Most early ED descriptions are general and largely served as
documentation of the names of enumerators and rates of pay. They
may simply state that a census taker had to enumerate an entire
county or an unspecified part of a subdivision. Beginning with 1850,
the ED descriptions became increasingly detailed.
Supervisor's Districts: A
supervisor's district is a large geographic area that usually covers several
counties.
Each state was divided into one or more large districts (SD's), then each of
those into hundreds of individual districts (ED's), one per enumerator usually.
So in a large state there will be several ED's, 47 for instance, in each SD. We are
going to divide states into multiple pages (In our Table of Contents), and the SD is
how we should do it, therefore we need to know which counties are in which SD.
Enumeration Districts: An Enumeration
District (ED) refers to the area assigned to a single census-taker to count persons
and prepare schedules within one census period. It is very important to become
familiar with the ED's used in the state and census year that you are transcribing
(they usually differ from year to year).
SCC Info | Transcriber Info Index |
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