Since 1790, the U.S. census has been a once-in-a-decade tradition of data collection. But this week’s #FridayFind highlights a rare exception to this long-standing statistics-gathering routine!

Apr 20

In 1880, the Federal Census was conducted twice in St. Louis. At the time, the city was competing with Chicago to be the fourth-largest city in the US. When the numbers didn’t turn out exactly as they hoped, city officials demanded a second enumeration. The first enumeration was then rejected, as you can see in the image above.

Need help to untangle other census oddities in your genealogy research? Email us at emma@backlog-archivists.com!

Dmitri Schmidt

Since 1790, the U.S. census has been a once-in-a-decade tradition of data collection. But this week’s #FridayFind highlights a rare exception to this long-standing statistics-gathering routine!

Tracing your family’s lineage can be a treasure hunt (or maybe a wild goose chase when you hit a brick wall). This week’s #FridayFind, however, isn’t quite so metaphorical.

We may be a few days late for April Fools’ Day, but this week’s #FridayFind is no joke!

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