Hi,

I’m working on the 1860 Census tabulations for Charles City County and have pulled them into a single spreadsheet. In addition, I’ve done the same for the 1860 slave schedule. Where it gets interesting is in the numbers of houses listed. The numbers should be the number of slave houses on a single “return/tabulation” for that owner. At the bottom of the page is a space for the total number of houses listed on that page. So far, so good. But, if you separately tabulate the number of houses on the page, they differ from the totals at the bottom. Also, there are some where rather than a vertical 1, there’s a slash that goes from lower left to upper right, with some on the same page.

In looking at how the enumerator listed the people, he started with the eldest and ranged down to the youngest, in most cases. Where that doesn’t follow is with slaves who were employed and marked as such. It appears that the enumerator listed individual households sequentially. Also up in the air is whether the houses represented duplexes as would seem to be the norm and then whether each side of the duplex was listed separately or not.

These are observations based on limited exposure to the nuances of the schedules. Any thoughts on whether what I’m seeing is due to range and variation among enumerators or what?

Lyle Browning, RPA
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