I hope that you used this past weekend’s lack of lessons to reflect on what you have learned so far; especially from the maternity questions in the 1910 and 1900 census records.
You should have seen that Flora Losee had two children between 1900 and 1910; both of whom had survived until 1910. The one child she lost died before 1900.
A look at the numbers of births compared to living children on those two census records for all the adult women reveals a sad rate of infant mortality. Miscarriage is still common today, much more common than most people realize, but children born today have a much better chance of survival than they did 110 - 120 years ago. Thank God.
Turning our attention to the one more step back in the census, today’s info is about the 1890 Census.
The 1890 census, as most genealogy researches are sadly aware, was destroyed as a result of a fire where they were stored in the Commerce Building in Washington, D.C. on January 10, 1921. The the first census to be tabulated by a machine known as Hollerith’s Machine, didn’t actually go up in flames, though. It suffered water damages and was later destroyed in 1935. Many years after the fire, the Bureau of Census sent a list of papers no longer needed to the Librarian of Congress. The list included item 22, "Schedules, Population . . . 1890, Original." The Librarian didn’t identify the item as permanent and thus Congress authorized its destruction on February 21, 1933. The actual destruction didn’t take place for at least another 2 years. You can read more about the 1890 Census’s fate here: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1996/spring/1890-census-1.html
It really is a terrible loss for genealogists because based on the existing aggregate data it represented a population increase of about 25% since the 1880 Census. That increase was in part the result of a tremendous amount of immigration that took place between 1880 and 1890. It also would have reflected a great amount of westward migration.
About 1% of it did survive though. Perhaps you are lucky enough to find your ancestors in the fragments that exist from Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, and the District of Columbia. Give it a shot. Take a look. My family isn’t in there though.
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