Agricultural, Industrial, and Veterans Census Schedules

Three census schedules that recorded farm output, factory output, and a veteran's Civil War service



The regular population census only recorded who lived where. Starting in 1850, the federal government also sent enumerators around with a second set of schedules. These asked what a household produced: how many acres a farm had under crops, what a small factory turned out in a year, and what livestock or machinery a family owned. In 1890 a very different, one-time schedule asked a single question of a single group instead: had you served the Union during the Civil War.


These schedules are worth seeking out because they tell you things about an ancestor that no other record does. A population schedule says a man was a farmer; the agriculture schedule says whether he owned 40 acres or 400, whether the land was improved or still being cleared, how much of it was in wheat or corn or tobacco, how many milk cows and hogs he kept, and what the whole place was worth. Placed beside a neighbor's entry on the same page, that turns a one-word occupation into a picture of how your family actually lived and where they stood in their community. The industry schedule does the same for a mill, a blacksmith shop, or a small factory, naming the proprietor, the capital he had invested, the hands he employed, and what he made in a year. Read across several censuses, the same entries show a family prospering, struggling, or moving on. The 1890 Veterans Schedule, meanwhile, may be the only surviving federal record placing an ancestor at a known address in 1890, since the population schedules for that year burned.


What the Agriculture and Industry Schedules Recorded


Both schedules recorded one farm or one business per line, in close economic detail:


  • Name of the farm's owner or manager, or the business's proprietor
  • Acres of land, improved and unimproved
  • Cash value of the farm, or capital invested in a business
  • Number and value of livestock, or the raw materials a business used
  • Crops produced in the year before the census, by bushel or pound
  • Kind of power or machinery used
  • Number of male and female employees and their wages


Both schedules grew more detailed with time. The 1850 through 1870 agriculture schedules run 2 pages per farm; the 1880 version fits on 1 page but adds acreage by crop and counts of poultry and eggs. The 1880 industry schedule also grouped city manufacturers by trade and added separate supplemental schedules just for bootmakers, sawmills, and gristmills. Coverage had limits too: in 1850 and 1860 a farm producing under $100 worth of goods a year was left off; from 1870 on, the bar rose to 3 acres or $500. A manufacturing business under $500 a year was excluded throughout.


The 1890 Veterans Schedule


The act of 1 March 1889 authorizing the Eleventh Census added something new: the names, units, and length of service of surviving Union soldiers and sailors, and the names of their widows. The U.S. Pension Office had requested it, so veterans could find comrades to testify in pension claims and Congress could count survivors and widows for future pension laws. The printed form, headed Surviving Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines, and Widows, Etc., asked for rank, company, regiment or vessel, dates of enlistment and discharge, length of service, post office address, disability incurred, and remarks. The schedule was meant to cover Union veterans only, but enumerators sometimes recorded Confederate veterans and veterans of earlier wars as well, so a name on this schedule is not by itself proof of Union service.


Why the Veterans Schedule Survived When the Farm and Factory Data Did Not


The 1890 census is best known for the population schedules a 1921 fire destroyed. Less known: no 1890 agriculture or industry schedule survives; the Census Office published that year's farm and factory data as statistics and kept no manuscripts. The veterans schedule escaped that fate because it never stayed in Census Bureau hands: Congress moved it to the Pension Office in 1894, then to the newly formed Veterans Administration in 1930, and the National Archives did not receive it until 1943. Neither the 1896 Census Bureau fire nor the 1921 Commerce Building fire ever had custody of it.


Even so, survival was uneven within that custody chain. Nearly all the schedules for Alabama through Kansas, and western Kentucky, went missing somewhere in the 49 years between 1894 and 1943, with no surviving record of how. Kentucky's loss falls along a real dividing line, with about 65 eastern counties surviving and 54 western counties gone. What remains covers the eastern half of Kentucky through Wyoming: nearly 75,000 pages, microfilmed as NARA publication M123 in 118 rolls.


Where the Schedules Are Held Today


Many of the schedules are digitized on FamilySearch and Ancestry. FamilySearch offers free index and images, organized as separate state collections and listed on its United States Federal Non-Population Census Schedules wiki page, with Illinois, Iowa, and Kentucky agriculture among the states covered. Ancestry hosts a combined index and image collection, U.S., Selected Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850-1880, by subscription. The 1890 Veterans Schedule is on both sites: free on FamilySearch as United States, Census of Union Veterans and Widows of the Civil War, 1890, and by subscription on Ancestry as 1890 Veterans Schedules of the U.S. Federal Census.


Online coverage is far from complete, and a schedule missing from both sites is sometimes available only on microfilm or on paper. Custody of the 1850-1880 agriculture and industry schedules is split, and which office holds the originals varies by state. The National Archives' own Nonpopulation Census Records page names a specific microfilm publication for many states. For others, California, Idaho, Mississippi, and Missouri among them, the originals never went to Washington and remain with a state library, state archives, or historical society.


Because custody splits this way, a phone call beats a search before a research trip. Ask whether the state archives or library holds agriculture, industry, and mortality schedules together or apart (Indiana keeps them separate) and whether the schedule has been filmed. A collection missing from the National Archives list and every online index is often still sitting on a shelf in the state capital, waiting for anyone who asks for it by name.



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