Brent and Judith:
The best reference work on the early federal censuses (through 1890) is Carroll D. Wright's The History and Growth of the United States Census (1900). It might be available on Google Book (I have my own copy. It has several pages (304-309) on manufactures in the 1810 federal census. They are divided into categories, two of which seem relevant to the questions posed on VA-HIST. The first listed is "Goods for apparel and furniture, of cotton, woolen, flaxen, hempen, and silken yarn or thread, made in the year 1810." About 25 different sorts of cloth-based manufacturing are then listed for this category, the first two of which are "Cotton goods in families - Yards made; value" and "Cotton-manufacturing establishments - Number; made; value" (305).
Wright notes on the previous page (304) that no original schedule of manufactures has been located for the 1810 census. The printed report or digest of the information collected was compiled by Tench Coxe. Unfortunately, Wright adds, this first effort at collecting manufacturing data for the federal census (1810) yielded results that were "more or less incomplete."
Anyway, Wright's is the book to check.
Doug Deal
History/SUNY Oswego
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tarter, Brent (LVA)" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 5:00 pm
Subject: Re: 1810 census quatnity of cloth
To: [log in to unmask]
> Judith Bailey Gabor wrote on 12 November 2008:
>
> "The 1810 federal census has a column for quantity of cloth.
>
> "What was the unit of measure?
>
> "Would this be the quantity of cloth made in the household?
>
> "Would this be all cloth or just certain fabrics?"
>
> That very much surprised me because I had not seen anything like
> that in
> any early federal census returns for Virginia. One of my colleagues
> starting clicking around on Google and found that in 1810 the census
> enumerators for 28 North Carolina counties reported data about looms,
> stills, and tanneries with statistics about production. She did
> not find
> references to any other statistics concerning other states, but not
> finding something on the Google doesn't mean it isn't there.
>
> (And sometimes, I think, finding something on Google doesn't
> prove that
> it is there.)
>
> Anybody else out there know anything about this or like this?
>
> Brent Tarter
> The Library of Virginia
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Please visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at
> http://www.lva.virginia.gov
>
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