1900 census of the United States

From Familypedia

The Twelfth United States Census, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States to be 76,212,168, an increase of 21.0 percent over the 62,979,766 persons enumerated during the 1890 Census.

This is probably going to be one of the most helpful censuses for the genealogist, for a variety of reasons. Like the 1880 and subsequent censuses, it includes the locations of birth for the mother and father of each member of a household, as well as the relation between each member of the household and the head of that household. Like only the 1910 census, it has the number of years each couple marked as "married" has been together. Compare this to 1880 and 1920, where no information was given about the date of married, or to 1930, where the age of each resident at first marriage was noted (a number that is more prone to ambiguity and mistakes in calculation than just the years since marriage). Most uniquely, this census is the only one published that features both the year and month of birth of every member of a household. This is a serious boon for any genealogist, as this helps disambiguate years of birth (someone who is "25" in June of 1900 could have been born in 1875 or 1874), allows for the disambiguation of common names (perhaps many records of a "John Phillips" born in 1897 can be found, but only a few of a "John Phillips" born in April of 1897), and appears to cut down slightly on the intentional misstatement of ages (saying you're 37 when you're really 45 is one thing, but saying you're 37 and remembering what year that would entail being born in and reporting that year without arousing the notice of the census recorder while really being 45 is another).

One major drawback of this census is that no information is given about the citizenship, naturalization status, or year of immigration of each citizen.

[edit] Notes

• One warning about the birth years on the 1900 census, they can be off by a year. It seems some census takes would get the age, 10 and when born, April and put down born April 1890. Well if the census was before April that person would really be 11 in 1900 and thereby born in 1889. - William Allen Shade 01:51, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Further reading

• Historic US Census data
• 1900 Census Tips, Tools, & Online Search for 1900 U.S. Federal Census

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This page uses content from the English language Wikipedia. The original content was at United States Census, 1900. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with this Familypedia wiki, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons License.