1890 United States census

1890 United States census
← 1880 June 2, 1890 (1890-06-02) 1900 →
Seal of the Department of the Interior
1890 census form
General information
Country	United States
Authority	Census Office
Results
Total population	62,979,766 ( 25.5%)
Most populous ​state	New York 6,003,174
Least populous ​state	Nevada 47,335

The 1890 United States census was taken beginning June 2, 1890. The census determined the resident population of the United States to be 62,979,766, an increase of 25.5 percent over the 50,189,209 persons enumerated during the 1880 census. The data reported that the distribution of the population had resulted in the disappearance of the American frontier.

This was the first census in which a majority of states recorded populations of over one million and the first in which three cities, New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, recorded populations of over one million. The census also saw Chicago rise in rank to the nation's second-most populous city, a position it would hold until Los Angeles, the 57th-most populous city as of 1890, supplanted it in 1990. This was the first U.S. census to use machines to tabulate the collected data.

Most of the 1890 census materials were destroyed on 10 January 1921 when the Commerce Department building caught fire, and in the subsequent disposal of the remaining damaged records.

Census questions

The 1890 census collected the following information:^[1]

The 1890 census was the first to be compiled using methods invented by

The 1890 census announced that the frontier region of the United States no longer existed,^[7] and that the Census Bureau would no longer track the westward migration of the U.S. population.

By 1890, settlement in the American West had reached sufficient population density that the frontier line had disappeared. For the 1890 census, the Census Bureau released a bulletin declaring the closing of the frontier, stating: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports."^[8]

Data availability

The original data for the 1890 census is mostly unavailable. The population schedules were damaged in a fire in the basement of the U.S. Department of Commerce building in Washington, D.C. in 1921. Some 25% of the materials were presumed destroyed and another 50% damaged by smoke and water, although the actual damage may have been closer to 15–25%. The damage to the records led to an outcry for a permanent National Archives.^[9][10] In December 1932, following standard federal record-keeping procedures, the Chief Clerk of the Bureau of the Census sent the Librarian of Congress a list of papers to be destroyed, including the original 1890 census schedules. The Librarian was asked by the Bureau to identify any records which should be retained for historical purposes, but the Librarian did not accept the census records. Congress authorized destruction of that list of records on February 21, 1933, and the surviving original 1890 census records were destroyed by government order by 1934 or 1935. Few sets of microdata from the 1890 census survive.^[11] Aggregate data for small areas, together with compatible cartographic boundary files, can be downloaded from the National Historical Geographic Information System.

State rankings

Rank	State	Population
01	New York	6,003,174
02	Pennsylvania	5,258,113
03	Illinois	3,826,352
04	Ohio	3,672,329
05	Missouri	2,679,185
06	Massachusetts	2,238,947
07	Texas	2,235,527
08	Indiana	2,192,404
09	Michigan	2,093,890
10	Iowa	1,912,297
11	Kentucky	1,858,635
12	Georgia	1,837,353
13	Tennessee	1,767,518
14	Wisconsin	1,693,330
15	Virginia	1,655,980
16	North Carolina	1,617,949
17	Alabama	1,513,401
18	New Jersey	1,444,933
19	Kansas	1,428,108
20	Minnesota	1,310,283
21	Mississippi	1,289,600
22	California	1,213,398
23	South Carolina	1,151,149
24	Arkansas	1,128,211
25	Louisiana	1,118,588
26	Nebraska	1,062,656
27	Maryland	1,042,390
28	West Virginia	762,794
29	Connecticut	746,258
30	Maine	661,086
31	Colorado	413,249
32	Florida	391,422
33	New Hampshire	376,530
34	Washington	357,232
35	South Dakota	348,600
36	Rhode Island	345,506
37	Vermont	332,422
38	Oregon	317,704
X	Oklahoma	258,657
X	District of Columbia[12]	230,392
X	Utah	210,779
39	North Dakota	190,983
40	Delaware	168,493
X	New Mexico	160,282
41	Montana	142,924
42	Idaho	88,548
X	Arizona	88,243
43	Wyoming	62,555
44	Nevada	47,355
X	Alaska	32,052

City rankings

References