History Lost: The Tragedy of the 1890 Census

in January 1921 hundreds of people watched as the fire department fought a fire in the US Commerce Building in Washington DC unable to reach the source of the smoke the fire department eventually just chopped holes in the floor and pumped down thousands of gallons of water and hope of quenching the blaze it took years to fully understand the cost of that fire because it it wasn't just damage to part of a federal building it was the loss of part of American history the 1890 US census counted 63 million people living in the United States but records for only some 6,000 of those survived today the story of how only point zero zero zero one percent of the 1890 u.s. census remains is a story of mismanagement that resulted in literally forgetting our history and led to the creation of the United States National Archives to protect our government records it is history that deserves to be remembered the American Constitution requires the taking of a decennial meaning once every 10 year census the first in 1790 with the results being used to determine representation in the House of Representatives before the Census Bureau was created in 1902 the census was handled by the Department of the Interior and over the 19th century was refined as the American population exploded and the nation grew across the continent the 1890 census was different from prior censuses in a few ways the first was that it was the first census were copies of the schedules the large sheets on which the information was recorded were not required to be kept by local county clerk's offices which meant that the originals sent to Washington were the only copies the census had also expanded to track more information than earlier censuses about race home ownership and more the 1890 census were also marked the end of the American frontier the final report concluded that at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that that can hardly be said to be a frontier line most significantly the 1890 census was the first census to have information tabulated by machine Herman Hollerith in age 19 it helped compile the 1880 census and saw the need for a machine that would help the census workers count the quickly multiplying millions of people living in the United States during the 1880s Hollerith developed tabulating machines specifically designed to assist with decreasing the amount of time it took to compile the census from the 8 years it took to process the 1880 census to a hopeful six years for 1890 the machines used punch cards to simplify counting an innovation that would last into the computing age later cholera's company would be one of the companies that merged to form IBM Robert Porter superintendent of the census was awed by the modern marvel for the first time in the history of the world the count of the population of a great nation has been made with the help of electricity he said the increases in speed and efficiency were enormous the first rough count of the u.s. population was completed in only six weeks the official count was released in December sixty-two million six hundred and twenty two thousand two hundred and fifty the tabulating machines ultimately would save more than two years in processing time and five million dollars for the US government not to mention that it was now possible to draw any combination of numbered facts from the data the most complicated and no more expense than the simpler ones allowing the data to be much better used and explained in reports one expert statistician reported that the machines work is unerringly as the mills of the gods but beats them hollow as to speed the newfound speed didn't save the census from controversy however most of the enumerators the census employees in charge of the tabulation had earned their positions through political patronage and there was no examination required to qualify Carl Schurz former Secretary of the Interior during the truth of rat Hayes administration said of them that they cannot spell and they cannot do arithmetic after the census was completed accusations of fraud and undercounting were rampant New York the most populous state in the census was accused of bolstering numbers for their own gain an intense business competition between st. Paul and Minneapolis Minnesota with lead to 19 convictions over businessman adding 1100 false names to the schedules in fact the US public was in an uproar before the census was completed the nation had worked itself into a froth of excitement the New York Times reported our mails of arms bearing age will make every civilized nation a pygmy relation and our wealth will grown by millions to more millions than purse proud Britain can boast given the enormous growth from 1790 to 1860 and putting aside the civil war that had interrupted the country's growth the country expected to be impressed but 63 million was not the number the public wanted one writer noted that the count sent into spasms of indignation a great many people who had made up their minds that the dignity of the Republic could only be supported on a total of 75 million it took another two years for all the data to be properly tabulated and collected but then there was another problem where put it all the government didn't have a specific space to store all this data there was no National Archive no group of people who responsible for preserving this collected data for posterity each agency was responsible for its own records and in the 19th century many were lost or destroyed before all of the general statistic volumes for 1890 and even been published portions of special schedules for the disabled mortality schedules and more were damaged by a fire destroyed by the Interior Department the general population schedules appeared to be unharmed however as in 1903 a census clerk reported that they were in fairly good condition demands for the government to protect and store government files have been growing for decades in 1884 the founding of the American Historical Association provided a serious entity to lobby for better document protection during the 1800s even the most important documents to the Republic were often rolled up and moved in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were kept in wooden cabinets at the Department of State in 1895 jate franklin jameson a professor at brown university submitted a plan for the collection and publication of government materials to the aah a and in 1898 the Association sent Congress a plan for a Hall of Records but no progress was made towards this establishment for several decades the fateful event that would lead to the establishment of the National Archives occurred on January 10th 1921 many census records were stored in a fireproof and water proof vault in the basement of the Commerce building but the original schedules for the 1890 census were stored on wooden shelving in an unlocked storage room outside of the vault at about 5 o'clock on January 10th a Commerce building watchman reported smoke though he could find a fire the desk watchman called the fire department as another watchman fled the basement which was full of smoke the fire department poured water into the building for the next five hours while a crowd gathered to watch they cut holes into the concrete floor of the first floor and from there flooded the basement getting the fire under control by 9:45 though they continued to drench hotspots until 10:30 though the damage to records was obvious and serious there was no disaster plan in place and except for a few Watchmen everybody then went home since his clerks assess the damage with dismay the next morning a crack in a glass window of the vault met some of the protected schedules were damaged but most serious was damaged to the 1890 census which were according to one witness first in the path of the fireman Sam Rogers the census director reported that 25% of the schedules were destroyed while 50% of the rest were damaged by water smoke and fire later estimates would put the amount destroyed at 15 to 25% the bureau thought it would be possible to salvage many of the records if a huge effort was made to copy them but a census clerk reported morosely that they were all certain to be ruined there's no way to restore the legibility of a water soaked volume the News Journal of Willington Delaware reported that the loss was probably the worst of its kind in the government's history pieces of the 1834 t-80 1900 and 1910 census were also damaged the damage was exacerbated when four days later the census clerks were still being denied access to the schedules while the insurance company examined the damage meanwhile speculation about how a fire started was roiling the country many suspected that despite a no-smoking rule in the building a discarded cigarette was to blame a woman in Ohio was convinced that the fire had been started to destroy her family's records and therefore robbed them of their property other said that it must have started in the wood shop or the boiler room some even suggested spontaneous combustion investigators did let her determine where the fire had begun but ultimately neither the census director nor anyone else found a definitive cause for the blaze the public was furious The Washington Post pointed out that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence remained at risk at the State Department calls for the National Archives multiplied from professionals organizations and members of the government when rumors began flying that the Interior Department plan to destroy the damaged census petitions flooded into demand the records be salvaged including from the National Geological Society and the Daughters of the American Revolution the government insisted they had no plans to destroy the records and Herbert Hoover at the time Secretary of Commerce wrote that the actual cost of providing a watchman and extra fire service to protect records probably amounts to more if we take the government as a whole then it would cost to put up a proper fireproof archive building in May of 1921 the records were returned to the Commerce building as no appropriations had been made it wasn't until 1926 that Congress appropriated funds to build the National Archives building which would eventually cost more than 177 million dollars in today's dollars the building said halfway between the Capitol in the White House and taking up two blocks had its cornerstone laid on February 20th 1933 it wasn't until the next year that President Franklin Roosevelt approved the creation of an agency to staff the building On June 19th 1934 unfortunately the 1890 census wouldn't survive to see it in December of 1932 the chief clerk of the Census Bureau sent a list of items to the librarian of Congress if they were not of historical interest the items were up for destruction item 22 on the list was the 1890 census and without comment the librarian sitted on to Congress where on February 21st one day after the cornerstone for the building meant to protect it was laid the census was authorized for destruction it's not completely clear when the final schedules when the 1890 census were destroyed or why there was no objection given the national outcry in 1921 but by differing accounts the schedules many of which presumably were undamaged were destroyed in 1930 or 1935 and since then only a handful of schedules at where and other locations have been identified preserving the record for only some 6,000 people the loss of the 1890 census was an irretrievable devastating loss for people who study things like demographics and genealogy we preserve our federal records like our census schedules because that's a vital part of preserving our nation's history our census schedules are a snapshot of who we were and how we lived in that time and their loss doesn't just damage our understanding of our national history but our ability to research and find our personal connection to that history and the loss of the 1890 census reminds us of how important it is that we preserve and protect our own archive of the past those things like photo albums and letters and family stories that are our connection to our history I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets a forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on facebook instagram twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 283,058

Keywords: History, the history guy, us history, us census, 1890 census, history guy

Id: hwFLuIYgEIk

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 28 2019