The Eleventh Census of the United States counted 62,979,766 people as of June 1, 1890. A fire in the basement of the Commerce Building on January 10, 1921, damaged or destroyed most of the population schedules. The next morning, Census Bureau Director Samuel Rogers found the basement in ankle-deep water, surrounded by charred and water-soaked heaps of paper. The Census Bureau reported the unsalvageable remainder to the Librarian of Congress in December 1932, and Congress authorized its destruction on February 21, 1933. Almost no county's 1890 population schedule survives today, leaving a 20-year hole between the 1880 and 1900 census for most families. Here are 11 record types that can fill part of that gap.
1. The Surviving Fragments
About 6,160 people do appear in surviving pieces of the actual 1890 population schedule, in fragments for Alabama, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas. The National Archives has digitized and indexed these fragments as Microfilm Publication M407, so it is worth a quick search before assuming your family's page is gone for good. The odds are long, though: that is a small fraction of the 62,979,766 people the census counted nationwide.
2. The 1890 Veterans Schedule
Census takers also filled out a special schedule of Union Army veterans and widows, which the U.S. Pension Office had requested to help veterans find comrades who could support pension claims. About 75,000 of these schedules survived the 1921 fire, far more than the population schedule did. Surviving pages run alphabetically from part of Kentucky through Wyoming, plus Washington, DC, and Navy vessels and yards, while entire states from Alabama through Kansas were destroyed along with the regular census. Each surviving entry gives the veteran's rank, company, regiment or vessel, enlistment and discharge dates, length of service, and any disability. Census takers sometimes recorded Confederate veterans on the same forms despite the schedule's name. It only helps, of course, if your family had a Union soldier or widow in it.
3. Oklahoma's Own Territorial Census
Oklahoma Territory took its own population count starting June 1, 1890, and unlike the national schedules, this one survived. It records each person's name, household relationship, race, sex, age, birthplace, years in the United States, naturalization status, and literacy, plus company and regiment for any soldier. It helps, of course, only families who were already there that year.
4. State Censuses
Several states ran their own censuses in the gap between 1880 and 1900. New York counted its population as of February 16, 1892, in 40 counties, and genealogists already treat that census as a working substitute for the missing federal count. Kansas took censuses in 1885 and 1895, Michigan in 1884 and 1894, and Wisconsin in 1885 and 1895. Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, the New Mexico Territory, and the Dakota Territory took a federally funded count in 1885. Coverage varies by state, and even a state that did take one may be missing or never have microfilmed some of its counties, so check what actually survives for yours.
5. City Directories
Most cities and larger towns published an annual directory listing the head of household by name, address, and occupation. A run of directories from 1880 to 1900 can approximate a year-by-year census substitute, though directories usually named only one adult per household and covered urban residents far better than rural ones.
6. Voter Registration Records
Poll books and voter registration lists from the 1890s name the men who registered in a given precinct, and sometimes include age, birthplace, or naturalization details. Keep in mind that these lists only include men old enough to vote, and in most states at the time, only white men. Women and many others were excluded from the franchise until well into the 20th century.
7. Tax Records
County tax assessors compiled property and poll tax rolls every year, and these sometimes survive for counties where the census does not. They work best for property owners and men of taxable age, so a family that owned no land or personal property may appear only faintly in your county's rolls, or not at all.
8. Land and Property Records
Deeds, mortgages, and other land records were recorded at the county courthouse as transactions happened, not once a decade. That means they can place a family in a specific county throughout the 1890s even when no other record does. A deed of gift or a dower release occasionally names a wife or child that no other surviving record from the period does. Like tax rolls, though, this record type favors families who owned property.
9. Naturalization Records
Before the Naturalization Act of 1906 took effect on September 27 of that year, any court of record could naturalize an immigrant. The declaration of intent and final petition stayed with that local court rather than a national office, and content and format vary widely from one court to the next. Not every immigrant filed at all, but a surviving 1890s declaration or petition can give you an arrival year or a former nationality the census would have asked about.
10. Passport Applications
A passport was not yet required for most foreign travel in the 1890s, but some Americans applied for one anyway, and the State Department kept the applications. These typically recorded a written physical description rather than a photograph; photographs were not required on passport applications until a State Department order in December 1914. Only a small share of the population ever applied for one in the first place.
11. Newspapers
Local newspapers of the 1890s regularly printed marriage and death notices, and many small-town papers ran a personal-items column noting who had visited, moved, or fallen ill that week. These items rarely add up to a full household count. But they sometimes place a family in a specific town on a specific date, which is often exactly what a missing census entry would have done.
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