Alan J. Pitts
Re: Census
Mon Apr 30 10:20:36 2001


The Birmingham Public Library catalog includes the 1866 state census of Alabama, described as follows:

Title 1866 census [microform] : [Alabama].
Publisher Montgomery, Ala. : State of Alabama, Department of Archives and History, 1981.

CALL # HA221.5 1981 LIB USE ONLY
10 microfilm reels ; 35 mm.

Reel nine goes through Tallapoosa County; reel ten was unavailable this morning, but I'd assume all counties are included. I worked with war-related losses in Lawrence County a year ago. There didn't appear to be a totals page for the county, so I was obliged to sum the figures at the bottom of each page. It would be interesting to compare totals for the state with existing estimates of war losses. Of course families that left the state prior to 1866 would not be counted, while families entering the state before the census would be.

The Social Schedule for 1860 is an intriguing but little-known Federal census register. The are usually four pages for each county which include statistics for schools (type, number of teachers and students in each, churches (denomination, value of building and number of persons each can seat), libraries (description and number of volumes) and newspapers (name, frequency and circulation). Also provided are crop estimates, average rates of pay for labor, as well as figures for taxes paid, number of persons in jail and number in the county poor house. Not everyone's cup of tea, since there are no references to individuals here, but a different picture of life in antebellum Alabama.