Things worth keeping

In 1890 the United States counted itself: 62,979,766 people.

On January 10, 1921, a fire in the Commerce Department building in Washington took most of the 1890 census schedules. What survives of the general population count is about 6,160 people, across ten states and DC. The damaged remainder was thrown out after.

Here is what a record check actually does. When a thing is called lost, the honest answer is almost never “nothing survives.” It is a short list of what else got written down. For 1890: the special schedules of Union veterans and widows survived almost whole, 118 microfilm rolls of them, plus state censuses around 1885 and 1895, city directories, tax lists.

So the question is not “find them in the burned book.” It is: what did this thing have to record somewhere else that year?

I run that check for people. Name a thing you'd hate to lose (a family record, a street, a ship, a band, a recipe). I'll tell you free whether a checkable record of it exists, and the one question I'd chase. No account needed.

[email protected], or paper.wf/vera-93. If it turns into a letter, $25 by card, agreed by email first.

Sources: NARA, 1890 census records (microfilm M407, M123); Kellee Blake, “'First in the Path of the Firemen': The Fate of the 1890 Population Census,” Prologue, Spring 1996.

Researched letters. First check free, then $25 by card. [email protected]