Category Archives: 1890 Census Substitute

1890 Census Substitute

1890 New York City Police Census

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Today’s topic is the 1890 New York City Police Census. Although I grew up in New Jersey and I’ve researched families in both New York and New Jersey, I’ve been fortunate to not have to find any family members in New York City.

In fact, I learned bout this police census from a friend who is trying to track her family in New York City in the late 1800s.

Given that the 1890 U.S. federal census was almost completely destroyed in a fire, I wondered if this police census might serve as a substitute for the federal enumeration.

Well, the answer to that question is ‘yes’ – IF you are lucky.

Here is some background information about this special census.

First, why would New York City authorize and pay for a local census in the same year in which a federal census was taken? Well, the mayor suspected that the city’s population had been under-counted and wanted verification of the true number of people living in the city.

Why did I mention that this census might help those looking for family in NYC IF they were lucky?

The results of this census aren’t easy to access except for the tiny percentage that is indexed. It is arranged by Assembly District, then Election District, then by street address and the records are incomplete.

New York Public Library has a Research Guide to educate researchers on the census an dhow to use it.

How can the census be viewed? Ancestry has indexed 26 out of 894 books or less than 3% of the people.

FamilySearch offers an index to part of the census, searchable by name, and mentions that some of the books are actually lost.

The FamilySearch Wiki details how to access the information and the kind of information to be found in this special census. There is also a sample page from the census.

By the way, if your family lived in Cherry Street and was named O’Connor, Bennet, Benson, Williams, Casey or Moonis, you might be in luck because those are the families on the sample census page!

If you really, really want to view this census page by page, FamilySearch has scanned the images and they are digitally available from a FamilySearch center.

If you have any idea of the enumeration district where your family might have lived, that might significantly cut down on the number of pages you’ll be browsing for your family. I would check the 1880 census and 1900 if it was my family to see where they were living.. Immigrants, in particular, moved often, but they generally stayed in the same neighborhood.

Remember, though, that some of the census books have been lost and you might not find your family. However, if you are one of the lucky ones, your family members are identified by address, name, sex and age, you’ll have a primary document that few people can claim – an image from an 1890 census.

1890 Census Substitute, Kucharik

I Found My Family in the 1890 Census Substitute!

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Sometimes, it seems that so many items are being digitized and posted online that it is hard to keep up with them all.

I recently found a new resource. Most researchers are aware the the 1890 U.S. census burned and literally only a handful of fragmented images survived out of the entire country.

City directories have been suggested as an alternative to documenting families in that time period.

The problem with city directories is that often only the head of household is listed, or at best, the wife’s name is included.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a city directory that listed everyone in each family. That is – until now!

I never knew my paternal grandfather as he died of tuberculosis when my father was ten. When I started asking questions about our family history, I asked my dad if he knew where his father was born. He said Delano, Pennsylvania near Mahanoy City.

Those towns are in Schuylkill County; Mahanoy City is 140 miles due west of Passaic, New Jersey, where my grandparents met, married and lived their lives.

From census records in 1900-1930, I learned much about my paternal line.

Stephen Kucharik was born in 1855 in Slovakia. He married Maria Kacsenyak three days after (yes, after) the birth of their first child, John, born 25 August 1877 in Okruzna, just east of Presov, Slovakia.

When the family emigrated to America around 1888, Stephen and Mary had two living children – John, born 1877 and Mary, born 1881. After settling in Pennsylvania, one more child had been born to them before the 1890 census – Anna, in 1889.

My grandfather, George, didn’t come along until 1893 and the youngest child, Stephen, was born in 1897, not long before the family moved to New Jersey.

I was also aware that, for whatever reason, Stephen Kucharik began to use the surname of Sabo/Szabo/Sabol socially. In 1900 and 1910, the family appears as Kucharik in the census. However, by 1920, everyone, including the adult children, used Sabo, which is the spelling of my maiden name.

With that background information, I happened to browse Internet Archive to see what was available for Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.

A book called Directory of the Eleventh Census of Schuylkill County, with a publication date of 1891 by E.E. Shartel appeared.

The 11th U.S. census was, in fact, the 1890 census. In the notes section, I found:

This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries [and the Pottsville Public Library.]

Schuylkill County had published a directory that included all the towns in the county at the time. . . . and it is an EVERY NAME directory!

Of course, I had to go down this rabbit hole. The towns were in alphabetical order, so Delano was quick to find.

Now, it is a good thing I know as much as I do about the Kucharik/Sabo family because. . . there were no Kuchariks in Delano.

Instead, there was a listing for the JOHN Sabol family, not the Stephen Sabo family.

Interestingly, addresses are not included in this directory.

However, if we substitute Stephen for John, we have a perfect fit for the Kucharik/Sabo family – Stephen, Mary and children John, Mary and Anna.

Stephen and Mary spoke very little English ever. Stephen was a laborer. In Pennsylvania, he eventually worked as a ticket taker on the railroad. I’ve inherited his watch.

Later, he became an alcoholic, which sadly was a common illness among Rusyns, even in the old country. After the family moved to Passaic, Stephen was a laundry worker in a bleachery.

In the above directory entry, son John would have been about 12, Mary 10 and Anna a little over one year old.

I have to wonder who gave the information to the men collecting the information. Stephen would have been working and Mary home with the children. They’d only been in America for a couple of years, but Mary and John would have learned enough English in that time to at least get by.

The information gatherers maybe confused the ages and listed John as 10 years old, but no ages for Mary and Anna.

In spite of the errors, this is clearly my family. Delano was a small place.

Stephen and Mary left little in the way of a paper trail, just a few appearances in city directories and the census records.

The Schuylkill County 1891 city directories are a fun discovery.