Essay: A situation concerning the 1860 census of East Feliciana Parish, La., Which may have importance to genealogists and historical researchers. Written by and submitted for the LAGenWeb Archives, Sep. 1998 by Claude B. Slaton, Baker, La. ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** I was chairman of a committee (sponsored by the Police Jury) who worked toward publishing a comprehensive history of East Feliciana Parish 1987-1991. Although the history never came to be, much hard work by committee members uncovered many new and exciting details of the history of the parish and its people. One incident stands out in my mind as important because of its potential impact on the use of US. Federal Censuses in all parishes/counties, not only East Feliciana. Mr. H. H. 'Mickey' Forrester of Clinton, La., undertook the daunting task of compiling the 1860 US. Federal Census of East Feliciana Parish, La., for publication. During the groundwork for that publication, Mr. Forrester and other committee members discovered the following important information: The prevailing United States laws at the time re: censuses stipulated that for each parish/county census taken in the US., three copies were to be created. One copy was to be sent to the Census Bureau in Washington, D.C., one copy was to be retained by the state, and a third copy was to be kept in the parish/county where the census was taken. Mr. Michael Howell of Jackson, La., had obtained a paper copy of the E. F. census that had been sent to Washington from the microfilm sold by the National Archives to the Genealogy Department, East Baton Rouge Parish Library (then in the Centroplex Branch, now at the Bluebonnet Branch, Baton Rouge) to use in the preparation of his excellent "Feliciana Confederates" book. Mr. Howell generously loaned his hard copy of the National version microfilm to the committee. A second paper copy was obtained from the Louisiana State Archives in Baton Rouge, who informed committee members that it was from a microfilm copy of the census records kept in the courthouse in Clinton, La. A copy of this microfilm is retained at the courthouse in Clinton to this day. We came to call the version from the National Archives as the 'National version' and the one from the Clinton courthouse as the 'Parish version'. When comparing the two, some very significant differences were observed. The National version was not nearly as well organized or complete as the Parish version. (1) Except in rare cases, the National version does not give the full names of the residents (first and middle), only initials. In the majority of cases, the Parish version spells out the resident's names. (2) The National version begins with Dwelling No. 1 and continues in number sequence throughout the entire parish census. Family numbers are identical to dwelling numbers, so it is impossible to see if more than one family lived in one dwelling. Conversely, the Parish version is broken down into individually-numbered towns and wards, and where more than one family lived in a specific dwelling, each family was designated by a different family number. (3) Most of the time, the National version abbreviated the place of birth of each individual, except for foreign countries. In the majority of cases the Parish version spells out the place of birth in full. Even though the Parish version is clearly the better copy, it, too, is not perfect. Internal evidence suggests that both versions were copied from some other version (possibly the unfound State version). Sometimes, data that was in the National version was not included in the Parish version. The 1860 Census of East Feliciana Parish as published by the History Committee finally used the Parish version as its base, and whenever additional or conflicting information was found in the National version, it was included. Since the combination of the Parish and National versions provided nearly complete information on parish residents, no attempt was made by committee members to locate a State version. When we reflected on what we had found, it became apparent how this situation had come about. All these censuses were created long before the invention of modern duplicating equipment. This means that all information had to be copied laboriously, by hand. Those of us who have spent a day or two a week in a library writing information in longhand can appreciate the challenge these people had in copying something as large as the census of an entire parish, literally thousands of names and attendant information. You would naturally use more abbreviations in a copy sent to the State or Washington, D.C., to save yourself additional writing, as long as you were complying with the letter of the law--a "copy" was to be sent, not necessarily a complete or accurate copy. And of course, the longer you wrote the more opportunities for errors there would be. What are the implications of this discovery to today's researchers? How many other parishes/counties in America have more than one version of the 1860 census in existence, one much better and informative than the other? Since almost all libraries order microfilm copies of the 'National version', could it be that genealogists are unknowingly using inferior research materials? And wouldn't this same scenario apply to censuses of other years? It certainly gives us something to think about. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Note: anyone interested in purchasing a copy of the 1860 census of East Feliciana Parish should contact the Police Jury office in Clinton, La. # # #