History

Overview

1810 Overview

1810

James Madison was President of the United States
on Census Day, August 6, 1810.

Authorizing Legislation

The authorization act for the third census stipulated that an assistant marshal must actually visit each household, or the head of each family, within his designated enumeration district and should not rely on hearsay or the like to complete his count. The act also mandated that the enumeration commence on the first Monday of August.

Enumeration

An act of May 1, 1810 amended the earlier authorizing legislation to require that, while they were collecting demographic data, assistant marshals also collect available economic data. These men recorded the "several manufacturing establishments and manufactures within their several districts, territories, and divisions." The marshals transmitted the manufacturing data to the secretary of the treasury at the same time they sent the results of the population enumeration to the secretary of state. No schedule was prescribed for the collection of industrial data and the nature of the inquiries were at the discretion of the secretary of the treasury. Because of this, the collection of manufacturing data was so erratic that it was generally considered useless except to identify broad industrial trends.

Intercensal Activity

An act of May 16, 1812, provided for the publication of a digest of manufactures containing data on the kind, quality, and value of goods manufactured, the number of establishments, and the number of machines of various kinds used in certain classes of manufactures. The report containing incomplete returns for more than 200 kinds of goods and including several items that were principally agricultural, was published in 1813.

Further Information

• A wide variety of historical statistics from this and other decades is available in Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970. It is available as a PDF [74.4MB] or 2-part ZIP file: Part I [52.2MB] | Part II [66.1MB].
• Reports and statistics from the 1810 census
• History and Growth of the United States Census: 1790-1890 [PDF 117MB], by Carroll D. Wright and William C. Hunt.