History

Artifacts

1923 Diary

Pages from Census Bureau field clerk William A. Hoblitzell's 1923 diary.

William A. Hoblitzell, a field clerk for the U.S. Census Bureau, carried this diary with him in 1923. In its daily entries, Hoblitzell recorded his work traveling around New York and New Jersey to collect data for a special report on the financial statistics of cities with populations of more than 30,000 inhabitants. The final entries of the diary record the events leading up to President William Harding's death on August 2, 1923.

In the years that followed, Hoblitzell supervised the agriculture and government censuses before retiring in the 1930s.

Hoblitzell also was an accomplished amateur photographer. Prior to working at the Census Bureau, he worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad and photographed the region around Missoula, MT. Some of his photographs can be found in the University of Montana Special Collections .

Learn more about interesting census-related artifacts on the Census Bureau's social media pages using the tag #ArtifactFriday. For previous #ArtifactFriday posts, visit the History Web site's Artifacts pages.