1820 Federal Census: Bovina's first census

The 1820 Federal Census, the fourth federal census, was taken in August 1820, when the Town of Bovina was barely six months old. The population of Bovina in that census was 1267. The population of the United States that year was 9,638,453, which included over 1.5 million slaves. One of those slaves was in Bovina, owned by Alexander Johnson. He’s the only slaveowner in Bovina’s history. Delaware County’s population that year was 26,587, of whom 56 were slaves. Bovina had one “free colored person,” a female under the age of fourteen (the county had 84).

The 1820 census did not list every person. It only listed the head of the household then numbers in that household (the census didn’t record every name until 1850).

The Official census report from Congress provided these statistics of Bovina’s population:

• Free White Males under ten years – 235
• Free white males of ten and under sixteen – 106
• Free white males between sixteen and eighteen – 26
• Free white males of sixteen and under twenty-six including heads of families – 114
• Free white males of twenty-six and under forty-five including heads of families – 107
• Free white males of forty-five and upwards including heads of families – 89
• Free White females under ten years - 211
• Free white females of ten and under sixteen - 104
• Free white females of sixteen and under twenty-six including heads of families – 119
• Free white females of twenty-six and under forty-five including heads of families – 100
• Free white females of forty-five and upwards including heads of families – 80
• Foreigners not naturalized – 141
• Number of persons engaged in Agriculture – 294
• Number of persons engaged in Commerce – 0
• Number of persons engaged in Manufacturer – 24
• Slaves males fourteen and under twenty-six – 1
• Free colored persons, females under fourteen years – 1

Bovina 150 Years Ago - the 1870 Federal Census of Bovina

William Stott conducted the 1870 Federal Census for the Town of Bovina from June 17 to July 4, 1870. Stott was born in Bovina in 1829, the son of George and Ellen Stott. He was married to Jennie McNee for, tragically, only six months. Married in March, she died in September 1866.  I have yet to work out when he passed away, but he was on the 1880 census for Bovina.

Here are some of the numbers that came out of that census from 150 years ago.

·  The population was 1022, a drop of 220 people from 1860. In 1880, the population would be about the same.

·  Oldest person in Bovina was Nancy Russell Thomson, who was eighty-nine. She was born in Scotland, the daughter of James and Sarah Russell. She married James Thompson in 1805. He died in 1867. She would live until 1873.

·  The town had nine people who were eighty or older, and twenty-two people under the age of one. 343 were age sixteen or under.

·  884 Bovina citizens were born in New York. Over half of that number had at least one parent of foreign birth, while 322 had both parents of foreign birth. Another ten were born in other states in the United States. 104 were Scottish born, another twelve were born in Ireland, eight in England and one from Switzerland.

·  Bovina’s population included 191 farmers (with 27 others listed as farm laborers), 35 domestic servants and 28 laborers. Bovina had eight teachers, eight carpenters, five stone masons and four each of coopers and shoemakers. Bovina had three each of dry goods merchants and millers and two each of such occupations as wagon maker, dress maker, tailoress, clergyman, blacksmiths and teamsters. Bovina also had one physician (Charles Frisbee), a Cattle Broker (John Hastings), a saloon keeper (Alex Kinmouth), and a tea peddler (Edward Boggs).

·  The town had 275 school children. Bovina’s residents were well educated, with only four people of school age or older who could not read or write.

·  Two town residents were labeled as ‘idiotic.’ One was blind and one was listed as ‘deaf and dumb.’

·  There were more cows than people in Bovina, with 2201 dairy cows. And there were slightly more sheep than people, with 1113 (five years later, the population of sheep would drop by half).

·  276 Bovina residents were male citizens of the United States (women could not vote at this time).

1920 Census in the Town of Bovina

Over a 20-day period in January 1920, John W. McCune went from door to door as a census enumerator, collecting information on the citizens of Bovina for the 1920 Federal Census. McCune had been appointed enumerator the month before. He was 54 years old at the time he took on this task.

Here’s some of the information he found about the people of Bovina 100 years ago:

·  Bovina had 858 people in 1920. The town had a population of 912 in the 1910 Federal Census and 867 in the 1915 New York State Census. At the 1925 state census, the number would drop slightly to 850. By 1930, there would be a significant drop to 771.

·  Bovina had twenty-one children under the age of one. There were 255 children aged 16 or less. 174 of these children were attending school. 735 people could read and write (the vast majority of those who couldn’t were young children).

·  The town’s oldest resident was Robert R. Haynes, age ninety-one, living with Everett J. DeSilva. Robert was the grandfather of Everett’s wife, Katherine Haynes DeSilva. Robert would live another six years, dying in 1926 at the age of 96.

·  Bovina had 402 females and 456 males.

·  Bovina had 404 married people and 121 single people above the age of eighteen (a total of 399 were listed as single, including children). Bovina also had thirty-two widows and twenty-two widowers.

·  Forty-nine people were listed as naturalized (nineteen), alien (twenty-six) or papers submitted (four).

·  757 Bovina citizens were New York born. Forty-eight others were born in the United States outside of New York, including twenty-one from Pennsylvania. Forty-nine were foreign born, including ten from Canada. Other countries represented include Austria (five), Denmark (two), England (five), Germany (five), Holland (one), Ireland (two), Italy (three), Norway (three), Scotland (eight), and Switzerland (three). Two came from “Straits Settlements,” which were a group of British territories in Southeast Asia, including Singapore.

·  Bovina had 141 farms, the vast majority likely being dairy farms.

·  Under Trade or professions, Bovina had 144 farmers – the single biggest category of occupation. Bovina also had 118 laborers, eleven teachers and six carpenters. Some other occupations included five servants, two blacksmiths, three machinists, three drivers and three truck drivers, and one each had such jobs as barber, electrician, file clerk, and postmaster.

McCune, the census taker, died in Bovina in 1942.

1940 Census

Seventy-two years ago this month, census enumerators started visiting households in the Town of Bovina as part of the 16th Decennial Federal Census. Enumerators worked for about a month collecting information on every person in town.  When done, Bovina's population was found to be 806 people, up 35 people from the 1930 census.

This census was released to the public on April 2.  A quick perusal brought up some interesting tidbits:

• William Springsteen was a hired hand working for Chauncey McFarland at the Butt End.  There is a note from the census taker after this entry:  "Left an individual census form on first visit, but when called for the party had left; address unknown."
• One of the families enumerated on April 6, 1940 was that of Benson LaFever, with my grandmother, Anna Bell, supplying the information about those in the household, including my then eight year old dad, Charles.  That same day, the census person visited the home of Kate Birdsall, a widow with two children at home.  Kate lived in what is now my house.  

The census included information as to where people were living five years previously.  Twenty-seven people in Bovina reported coming from Nebraska:

• Two families, the Rabelers and the Mayhews, had come from Madison, Nebraska.  The Rabelers had all been born in Nebraska, except the head of the family, Henry.  Henry, age 62, had been born in Germany.  The Mayhews had all been born in Iowa, except for Elizabeth, wife of Arthur Mayhew, who was born in Kentucky. 
• The Alec Rabeler family, comprised of Alec, his wife May, and sons, Alex, Raymond and Charles and daughter Ruth, came from Stanton, Nebraska.  
• The Gouldhammer (Goldhammer) family came from Boone, Nebraska.  Hero and his wife Freida were German born.  Their daughter 14 year old daughter Hilda was born in Nebraska.   
• The 20 year-old  hired man on the Henry Menke farm, Egar Grotelueschen, came from Platte, Nebraska.

The 1940 census asked a number of questions concerning employment, including the number of hours worked March 24-30, 1940 and the annual salaries. 

• Farmers had very high hours recorded, from 70 to over 90 hours a week.  They did not record a salary. 
• Marjorie Ormiston, a school teacher, recorded 80 hours.  
• Helen Fuhrmann, age 18, was a cook in a hotel, working 74 hours a week while living at home with her parents and siblings.
• William Sarle listed his occupation as a Welfare Doctor, working 40 hours a week.
• Town Highway Superintendent Hugh McPherson recorded 100 hours a week, earning $1200 a year.
• Alex Hilson reported working 60 hours a week as a clerk at a retail grocery store, earning $1000 a year.  The store was his father's store.  He was 25 years old and was enumerated with his wife, Lillian (who  is still going in her 90s!).
• Art Decker was earning $1400 a year as a truck driver for the county.  
• There were two active clergymen in Bovina.  Kenneth Arnold was the Episcopal priest at St. James Church in Lake Delaware, earning $3000.  Harvey McClellan, the minister of the Bovina United Presbyterian Church, was earning $1800 a year for 72 hours a week of work (his housekeeper, Anna Cowan, earned $156 annually for also working 72 hours a week). 
• Lake Delaware generally had higher salaries than other areas of Bovina because of the Gerry Estate. Estate superintendent Thomas Wallace earned $3300.   Herdsmen Roy Mauger and Burnell Lathrop each earned $1200, as did the foreman of the breeding stables, Wessel Pothemus.  The garage foreman, Purl Grundy, earned $1080.  Game protector, Thomas Rae, earned $2400.  Harry Rendall, the Gerry Estate gardener, did not earn nearly as much, earning $675 a year for 45 hours of work a week. 
• The highest salary recorded on the 1940 census for Bovina is that of Mathew L. Bruce, earning '$5000+' for 60 hours a week as a farm superintendent. 
• Malcolm Hotchkin, age 42, earned $1200 a year as a shovel operator, working 100 hours a week.  His daughter Margaret, age 17, worked 5 hours a week doing clerical work in a public school.  She earned $19 for 1939.  [Margaret's sister Barbara would marry fellow Bovina resident John Hilson.]
• There were several people working for the Bovina creamery.  Lindsey Moore earned $1820 a year as the superintendent.  Floyd Aitken worked 70 hours a week at the creamery in the 'dry milk room,' earning $924.  My uncle, Bob Boggs, earned $1090 annually as a worker at the creamery, working 63 hours a week. 
• Cecil Russell reported working 60 hours a week as proprietor of a retail grocery store, while his competitor, John Hilson, reported 65 hours. 
• Raymond Lewis was working as a carpenter for the National Youth Administration, though he worked only 37 weeks for them in 1939.  In April of 1940, Raymond was the census enumerator for Bovina. He was 25 years old, living with his parents and two brothers.  His house was the 9th in the enumeration.  

Here's a sample page from the Bovina census.  I was able to download it from Ancestry.com, but the 1940 census also is available for free at http://1940census.archives.gov/.  I happen to have chosen the page where my dad and his family show up - dad's on line 59. 

Census Figures for Bovina

Recently released census numbers show that Bovina's population dropped slightly in the 2010 census to 633, down from 664 in 2000.  The fact that Bovina still is above 600 is noteworthy.  Bovina's population dropped below 600 in 1960 and stayed there until 2000. 

The year the town of Bovina was created in 1820 was also a census year.  Bovina's population was double (plus one) today's figure - 1267.  The town's population reached a peak of 1403 in 1840.  It started to drop in 1850 and dropped steadily through the 19th and into the 20th century.  The biggest single drop happened in 1870 when the town's population was down 17% from 1860.  That year, Bovina had just over 1000 people at 1022.  By 1890, the number had dropped below 1000 and never went above that figure again.  Bovina's population was at its lowest in 1970, when 506 people were counted.  In 2000, the number of people in Bovina went above 600, hitting 664.  This was a 20% increase over 1990.

Here's the census numbers for each federal census since 1820:

1820    1,267

1830    1,348

1840    1,403

1850    1,316

1860    1,242

1870    1,022

1880    1,020

1890    926

1900    932

1910    912

1920    858

1930    771

1940    806

1950    711

1960    594

1970    506

1980    562

1990    550

2000    664

2010    633

Bovina's Polish Community in 1910

I've finally finished the initial transcription of the Bovina 1910 census. I say initial because I need to clarify some of the entries - the handwriting was a bit of a challenge. And the fact that census summaries say Bovina had 912 people while I have a list of 910 needs to be addressed. A couple of people may be missing.

But in the meantime, I can report that the vast majority (848) of the people living in Bovina said that they were born in New York. The second most common response was Scotland, with 15 making that claim. Tied for third place with 7 people each were England and, a bit of a surprise, Poland.

The seven people who were born in Poland actually said Russia as the country. Remember that in 1910 Poland did not exist as a country - modern day Poland came into existence after the First World War. The reason we know it was Poland is because with the country, the census taker also noted the native language spoken.

So who were these seven people? There were Mike and Jennie Zenkowski. Mike was a farmer who came to the US in 1902 and had been married for 4 years in 1910. He married his Polish born wife about 4 years after he came to the US (the census records do not say when she arrived). He and Jennie had two children, both born in the US. There was Frank Zemkowski, who was living with the Dixon Thomson family as a farm laborer. It is possible that Zenkowski and Zemkowski were the same name and the census taker messed up the spelling.

Steve Slimenski came to the US in 1909, while John Slimenski came the following year. They may have been related, but we can't tell from the census. Steve was 21 and working as a farm laborer on the Zenkowski farm. John was 30, married and living as a boarder at the home of Fred White. His wife was not with him and very likely was still in Poland (if he had been widowed, it would have said so in the census). The two Slimenskis were listed as only speaking Polish.

Frank Sylvesca or Sylvisca was a 48 year old farm laborer at the home of Dewitt Sharp. He too was only able to speak Polish, at least according to the census taker. He arrived in the US in 1900, as did his fellow countryman, Arthur Silinsky (or Silunaky). Arthur was a 25 year old farm laborer on the Maynard farm and was able to speak English.

There is much the census can't tell us about Bovina's Polish residents. We have no idea how they may have interacted with each other. If they did interact as a community, they didn't last long - at least not in Bovina. The Zenkowskis had two more children while in Bovina but by 1920 the whole family had left town. In fact, all of the seven Polish natives who showed up in the 1910 census for Bovina were gone by the time the census taker came back a decade later.

I'll have another entry or two about the 1910 census and what the data show, but this small group of Poles in Bovina caught my eye as an interesting and untold story about the town.

Bovina 100 Years Ago - the 1910 Census

In this census year, I have been doing a series of blog entries about Bovina censuses. I've been focusing on the censuses from 1860 and 1910 - 150 and 100 years ago. After a couple of entries about the 1860 census, I'm ready to review the 1910 census.

Bovina's population from 1860-1910 continued the drop that started after 1840. The 1910 population of Bovina was at 912, down over 300 from 1860's number of 1242 (it should be noted that the biggest drop took place between 1860 and 1870, when the Bovina's population fell by over 200). The population of Delaware County over that same period went up slightly, while New York State's population more than doubled. The US Population in 1860 was 31,443,321. By 1910, it was 92,228,496, almost triple the 1860 figure.

And while the numbers in Bovina were down, the information being collected was more detailed. Information collected in 1910 that was not being collected in 1860 included the number of children of each mother (and the number still living), number of years of current marriage, employment status at time of the census, did they own or rent, was the property mortgaged and were they a Civil War veteran.

During my initial skim of the census records, one thing that struck me is in this census, unlike the 1860 one, there are people that I recall from my childhood and young adulthood. Some of them included:

• Grace Coulter, who later married Dave Roberts and lived on Maple Avenue, was less than a year old in 1910. She was a school teacher at the Bovina school and in other area schools. I remember Grace and Dave later in their lives - I would visit them almost every time I came to Bovina. Grace was 83 when she passed away.
  
• Another Coulter I remember was Ruth Coulter, who later married Bill Parsons. Ruth was five years old and living with her parents and a couple of aunts in 1910. Ruth passed away in 2000.
• Fletcher Davidson, one of my predecessors as Bovina Town Historian, was a teenager living with his parents and his sister Vera. (See my blog entry from August 23, 2009 for more about Fletcher.)
  
• Fred and Nell Henderson were my neighbors when I was a child until they sold their home to Jim and Mary Haran in 1963. They were in their late 20s at the time of the 1910 census and had been married for 4 years. Fred and Nell would go on to celebrate 75 years of marriage before Fred's death in 1971. Nell died the following year.
  
• James Hilson, who I remember as the old gentleman who worked in Hilson's Store across the street from where he lived, was a teenager living with his parents and siblings. Jim died in 1984.
  
• Helena Strangeway was 22 at the time of this census, living with her parents and sister. She became the sister-in-law of James Hilson when she married his brother John in 1913. Helena died in 1976 at age 89.
• Bob Boggs, who became my uncle when he married my mom's sister Geraldine Edwards, was 4 months old at the time of the census. He had an older brother Don. Bob passed away in 1991.
  

Both of my paternal grandparents also are in the census:

• Anna Bell Barnhart, my dad's mom, was 16, living with her parents and three siblings at their farm on Pink Street. Grandma married James Calhoun (also in this census) in 1917 and was widowed a year later when James died in the First World War. She married grandpa in 1923 and died in 1980.
  
• My grandfather, Ben LaFever, was 10 years old and living with his uncle and aunt, Dave and Aggie (Burns) Draffen up on Crescent Valley Road (his younger brother, Clarence, was living with their grandparents, Alex and Nancy Burns, right next door). Grandpa's mother had died in 1908 so he and his brother were shipped off to his mother's relatives back in Bovina. Grandpa died in 1982.

Other names I remember from my youth include Cecil and Isabell Russell, Bill Burns, Les Hoy, Leroy Worden (another neighbor from my childhood), Helen Gladstone (Mrs. Robert Hall), Henry Monroe, and Margaret Gordon, who was my social studies teacher in 7th grade.

There will be more coming about this census once I get the data into a database so I can do some analysis. How many of the 912 people in Bovina were going to school? How many were employed? And at what occupation? Were family sizes bigger or smaller compared to 1860?

So watch this space for further developments.

What Happened to Adam Easton - More Information From the 1860 Census

In my last blog entry, I reported on some statistics from the 1860 census as part of a small project to report on Bovina 150 years ago. I noted that noted under occupation, Bovina had 185 farmers, as well as 50 servants and 22 ladies.

From there, the number of people in each profession drops into the single digits. The census recorded eight merchants, including two recorded specifically as grocers - Alexander Kinmouth and Robert Sloan. The six merchants were James Adee, William Archibald, James Elliot, Thomas E. Hastings, John M. Murry, and Walter Telford.

Bovina also had eight shoemakers. Some of the shoemakers appear to have been in close proximity to each other. Three families enumerated in a row had four shoemakers. These included father and son Sloan and David Orr, as well as John Downie and Richard Smith. Other shoemakers in Bovina included John Halsted, Charles F. Smith and William Boggs. Listed in the census as a tanner, William Lull was also listed in the 1860 industrial census as also being a shoemaker and owning his business. Boggs also was listed in this industrial census.

Bovina's six blacksmiths were George Frelts, John Johnston, Bartholomew McFarland, Almeron McPherson, Patrick Murphy, Robert Penell. George Frelts was living with Almeron McPherson, likely in an apprenticeship (and Frelts is only a guess - the handwriting was very hard to decipher). Bovina also had four carpenters, two millers, two harness makers and two cabinet makers.

There were a few professions for which there was only one representative each. These included a bookbinder (Thomas Georgia), butcher (John Thompson), clothier (Thomas H. Johnston), innkeeper (Dorcas Hamilton), milliner (Margaret Jones), seamstress (Margaret White) and tailor (John Phyfe).

914 of the 1241 Bovina citizens enumerated in the census were not listed with any occupation noted. This would include many of the wives and almost all the children.

One other occupation in the 1860 was that of laborer. Bovina recorded seven such workers. Laborer might simply have been a way to explain someone in the house. Sometimes they were related, other times they were not. One laborer stood out because he was only 9 years old - at least if the census taker can be believed. While many of the children in Bovina certainly worked on the family farm, this is the only child specifically given that as an occupation. He was living with William and Rachel Rutherford with two teenagers also seemingly unrelated. The 9 year old, Adam Easton, does not show up in any future Bovina censuses. So we don't really know what happened to little Adam Easton. If anyone does, let me know. I hate to have him disappear from history!

Bovina in 1860 - What's With All Those Ladies?

150 years ago, the federal government conducted the decennial census of U.S. population. The results from Bovina were fairly typical for the area, but some interesting little tidbits caught my eye. Bovina's population in 1860 was 1240 people, occupying 220 dwellings. Bovina had 644 men and 596 women. The oldest person in Bovina that year was 86 year old Jennet Gordon, who was living with Alexander and Martha Gillie (if they were related, I cannot find how). Bovina also had 64 children aged one or less.

One bit of data collected included the person's 'profession.' The single most common profession recorded, as you may have guessed, was farmer. 185 men were reported as farmers. And yes, it was all men. No women were recorded as being farmers (though many of those 185 men listed as farmers were married and you can bet their wives were farmers, too). The second most common profession was a bit of a surprise to me. Bovina had 50 people listed as servants.

And the third most common was a real surprise - and a bit of a puzzle. Bovina had 22 women who were recorded as having 'Lady' as their profession. A list of these women is at the end of this post - one of these 22 ladies included Bovina's oldest resident, Jennet Gordon. As I went through the data, I found it slightly perplexing and maybe a bit quaint, but as I kept finding these ladies I did see a pattern. They always were the head of the household, which meant there was no man in that position. It dawned on me what I was seeing - these ladies were likely widows. After a bit more research, my hypotheses was proven - for the most part. Not all of these ladies were widows. I found one woman who was single (Hannah Halstead) and another whose husband was still living. Nancy Erkson was the head of her household in 1855 and 1860, but by 1865, her husband, Archibald, was back as the head of the household, as he had been in 1850. There could be quite a story there or just a matter of some sloppy census taking.

I was curious about the use of 'lady' in census records. I have not seen it in any other Bovina census rolls. Did it show up in other communities? A quick scan of 1860 census records from Delhi and Andes revealed no one labeled as 'lady.' What I did find were at least two examples in each town of a woman as head of the household and as a farmer. Not a lady in sight. This identification of lady as an occupation appears to have been somewhat unique to the 1860 Bovina census - though further research might find other towns using this term.

Most of these Bovina ladies likely were farmers - the census taker in Bovina just didn't want to call them that! Did he think he was being kind, or was he a male chauvinist pig? Was it an honor or a pejorative? Since this was 150 years ago, we really can't be sure of his motive, if any. Maybe he just misunderstood his instructions. I would like to think that these women would have been proud to be called farmers and would have preferred that to being called 'lady.'

Look for a future blog posting on some of the other things noted in the 1860 census.

And here are the names and ages of those 22 Bovina 'Ladies'

Adee, Harriet - 56
Douglas, Catharine A. - 64
Erkison, Nancy - 41
Gordon, Jennet - 86
Halsted, Hannah - 58
Hobbie, Sally E. - 50
Hogaboom, Elisabeth - 48
Johnston, Mary - 66
McCune, Catharine - 64
McFarlan, Elisabeth - 75
McKenzie, Margaret - 79
McNaught, Margery - 55
Pherdon, Charlotte - 60
Purdy, Anna - 68
Seacord, Ann - 38
Sloan, Jane - 63
Snooks, Mary - 47
Storie, Mary - 75
Thompson, Jennet - 40
Turnbull, Margaret - 35
Tuttle, Sarah - 64
White, Jane - 55