Transcription Information

Notes for the 1873 Madison County, Iowa, Census

Special thanks go to Mary Welty Hart of Winterset, Iowa who, while searching for lost townships of the 1885 Madison County State Census at the Madison County Historical Museum, discovered this previously unknown 1873 Iowa State Census. The census was found in a large cache of documents that had been given to the Museum by the County Courthouse. Thanks also go to the Madison County Historical Museum for allowing the Transcriber to photograph the original census manuscript.

There was no specified place on the page to put a page number. In some cases the enumerator wrote a page number on every page or every other page.

At the top of each page was:

“Census Schedule of________Township, __________County, State of Iowa, for the Year 1873”

This was followed by the line of column headings, a line of column numbers and then 41 lines for data entry. The data entry lines were not numbered. At the bottom of each page was a line for writing summaries of the data. In two instances, the enumerator used the summary line to add another family entry making for 42 lines on those pages.

The column headings were as follows:

1. Dwelling-houses numbered in the order of visitation
2. Families, numbered in the order of visitation
3. Name of Each Head of Family
4. Number of white males
5. Number of white females
6. Number of colored males
7. Number of colored females
8. Number of persons entitled to vote
9. Number of Militia
10. Number of Foreigners not naturalized
11. Number of acres of land improved
12. Number of bushels of WHEAT harvested in the year 1872
13. Number of bushels of CORN harvested in the year 1872
14. Number of bushels of OATS harvested in the year 1872
15. Number of bushels of BARLEY harvested in the year 1872
16. Number of pounds of WOOL shorn in the year 1872

Specific issues:

1. In Penn Township, the Enumerator put “1”s in the Dwelling and Family columns rather than ordering them consecutively. It appears that he left out the “1”s whenever there were multiple families at the same dwelling.
2. Spelling by the Enumerators was generally very poor. Handwriting was typical for a census, some was good, some was average, and some was atrocious.
3. The index that was generated by the Transcriber has additional entries for those cases where the incorrect spelling of the name would make it difficult for the researcher to find their relative.