The Federal Government did not provide blank printed forms to the U.S. Marshals. Uniform printed forms were used only if supplied by the U.S. Marshal at his own expense to his assistants. Otherwise, the assistant marshals used whatever paper was available, and recorded the information by hand in the format required by Congress shown below. There may be annotations on and attachments to these schedules, such as certificates of oaths taken and population totals. Later annotations include handwritten and mechanically-stamped page numbers.

Congress required the format shown below for the 1810 census returns:

The law required "That every person whose usual place of abode shall be in any family on [August 6, 1810], shall be returned, as of such family; and the name of every person who shall be an inhabitant of any district or territory without a settled place of residence, shall be inserted in the column of the schedule, which is allotted for the heads of families, in that division where he or she shall be on [August 6, 1810]; and every person occasionally absent at the time of the enumeration, as belonging to that place in which he usually resides in the United States."

Secretary of State Robert Smith had general supervision of census operations and tabulating and reporting the results to the President and Congress.

The U.S. Marshal for each Federal judicial district was responsible for taking the census in his district with the help of assistant marshals whom he appointed. Each took an oath or affirmation that "I will well and truly cause to be made, a just and perfect enumeration and description of all persons resident within my district, (or territory) and return the same to the Secretary of State, agreeably to the directions of an act of Congress, entituled [sic, entitled] An act providing for the third census or enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States, according to the best of my ability."

Every person over age 16 was required to cooperate: "That each and every free person more than sixteen years of age, whether heads of families or not ... shall be, and hereby is obligated to render to such assistant [marshal] ... a true account, if required, to the best of his or her knowledge, of all and every person belonging to such family ... on pain of forfeiting twenty dollars...."

The census began on Monday, August 6, 1810, and was finished within 9 months.

U.S. marshals conducted the 1810 census under the rules and directions established in an Act of Congress approved March 26, 1810.

• Name of the county, parish, township, town or city, where the family resides
• Name of head of family
• Number of free white males under 10 years of age
• Number of free white males of 10 and under 16 years of age
• Number of free white males of 16 and under 26 years of age
• Number of free white males of 26 and under 45 years of age
• Number of free white males of 45 years of age and upwards
• Number of free white females under 10 years of age
• Number of free white females of 10 and under 16 years of age
• Number of free white females of 16 and under 26 years of age
• Number of free white females of 26 and under 45 years of age
• Number of free white females of 45  years of age and upwards
• Number of all other free persons, except Indians, not taxed [free African-Americans]
• Number of slaves

On May 1, 1810, the Congress passed an Act directing that "an account of the several manufacturing establishments and and manufactures" be made.

However, neither Congress nor the Secretary of the Treasury provided U.S. Marshals with specific instructions about the information that they should collect. As a result, the quality and quantity of the information collected about manufactures varied greatly.

To facilitate data collection, the Treasury Department divided manufactured products into 25 broad categories, encompassing more than 220 kinds of goods. As the U.S. marshals and their assistants conducted the decennial census, they also visited the manufacturing establishments in their assigned areas to obtain economic data. These data generally consisted of the quantity and value of products manufactured.

In March 1812, Congress authorized $2,000 for the Treasury Department to prepare a statistical report on the kind, quantity, and value of goods manufactured and the number of manufacturing establishments in each state, territory, district, and county. The May 1813 report noted that the economic data were of poor quality because of serious undercounting and omissions during the enumeration.