1890 United States Census facts for kids

The Eleventh United States Census was a big count of all the people living in the United States. It happened on June 2, 1890. The census found that there were 62,947,714 people in the country. Sadly, most of the records from this census were lost in a fire in 1921.

What Was the 1890 Census?

A census is like a giant survey that counts everyone in a country. It helps the government understand how many people live where. This information is used for many important things. The 1890 census was the eleventh time the U.S. had done this count.

Counting People with Machines

For the first time ever, machines were used to count the census information. This was a huge step forward! A man named Herman Hollerith invented these special machines. They helped to "tabulate" the data, which means to organize and count it quickly.

Using Hollerith's machines made the census much faster. The 1880 census took eight years to count all the information. But thanks to the new technology, the 1890 census only took one year! This was a big change for how data was handled.

Native American Population Count

The 1890 census also counted the number of Native Americans living in America. It found that there were 248,253 Native Americans. This number was lower than in earlier censuses. For example, the 1850 census had counted 400,764 Native Americans.

The End of the Frontier

One interesting thing the 1890 census reported was that the American frontier no longer existed. The "frontier" was a term for the edge of settled land, where pioneers were still moving into new areas. The census showed that there were no longer large areas of unsettled land. This meant that the country was considered "settled" from coast to coast.

Images for kids

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  This is a Hollerith tabulator. It was changed to help count families in the 1890 census.

See also

In Spanish: Censo de los Estados Unidos de 1890 para niños