This is a companion page to “Mapping the Census—1840–1911.” It uses data from the same census reports, plotted on two Excel spreadsheet charts. The results are more limited than the mapping project. The two charts show the number of households and individuals, respectively, in each census year. The data is sorted by country (U.S. and England), census year, and family branch. The main purpose of the charts is to see how the numbers have changed over time.
The first chart is the number of households by census year
(Click on image to enlarge)
The second chart shows the number of individuals in those households, i.e., the total number of people reported in each census.
(Click on image to enlarge)
How to read the charts
Each column is labeled “US” or “UK” to show each country’s respective census numbers. Each pair of columns is labeled with the census years (e.g., “1840-41”). I realize UK is not the same thing as England, but the census numbers would have been the same, so I hope my readers will forgive this slight misstep on my part.
Each column is divided into colored (coloured for my British readers!) segments representing different family branches. The chart legend identifies the branches, beginning with “US” or “UK” to identify the country. The abbreviations used for the branches are:
- Ch: Chatteris. This branch can be traced to John Casbon or Casborn (~1818–1848) and Emma Taylor (~1825–1882). John’s origins are unknown, but the family first appears in the 1851 census, living in Somersham, Huntingdonshire. They settled in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire sometime before the 1861 census.
- Cr: Creole. The term describes the cultural & ethnic heritage of this family, whose roots have been traced to Spain and France in the 18th century, and who migrated to Louisiana in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Some descendants use the Casbon surname and others go by Casborn.
- LP: Littleport/Peterborough. These are the descendants of Thomas Casborn (~1776–1855) and Ann Dolby (~1777–1843). Thomas was born in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, but migrated to the county of Huntindgonshire after his marriage. His son, Thomas (~1807–1863), settled in Peterborough, Northamptonshire, as did subsequent generations.
- MM: Meldreth/Melbourn. These are the descendants of Thomas (~1743–1799) and Jane (Wilson, 1741–1831) Casbon of Meldreth, Cambridgeshire. The village of Melbourn is adjacent to Meldreth and was the home of many of Thomas’ descendants. Two of Thomas’ grandsons (Thomas [1803–1888] and James [~1813–1884] emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Indiana. Hence the Meldreth/Melbourn branch has descendants in both England and the United States.
- Ot: Other. These households have no apparent ties to the other branches, and randomly appear in different census years. The Casbon spelling of the surname appears to be either an error on the part of census enumerators or perhaps temporary variant spellings that did not persist. These households are included for the sake of completeness and to distinguish them from the other identified branches.
Each colored segment is labeled with the number of households or individuals in that branch.
The line above the columns shows the combined total numbers for the U.S. and England in a given census year pair (e.g., 57 total households in 1900-11).
Some observations based on the data
The dip in totals in 1890 is due to the fact that there is no U.S. data. The 1890 United States census has been lost (in part due to a fire, and in part due to bureaucratic mistakes – it’s a long story).[1]
Excluding 1890, you can see that the number of households increased almost six-fold and the number of individuals almost four-fold from 1840 to 1911. In simple terms, this means there were enough surviving male offspring in each generation to enable population growth.
Some branches were more successful than others at increasing their numbers over the years. The Meldreth/Melbourn branch was the most successful (in both the U.S. and U.K.), followed by the Creole branch, and then the Chatteris and Littleport/Peterborough branches. The latter two saw very little growth, or even some shrinkage over the entire time period.
As a percentage of the whole, the U.S. branches grew more than the U.K. branches, starting with 10 percent of households and ~20 percent of individuals in 1840/41, and ending with ~30 percent of households and 44 percent of individuals in 1910/11. (I excluded the “Other” category from these calculations.)
The numbers are only as good as the quality of the data. Unfortunately, the data is far from perfect. I’m sure at least a few census records are not included in my data set. This is mainly due to misspellings and transcriptions errors that give inaccurate search results. In addition, a small number of households might have been missed during any given census year. Nevertheless, I think I’ve captured most of the data.
There is still a lot of information to be gleaned from these censuses … something to be saved for a future project!
[1] Kellee Blake, “’First in the Path of the Firemen’ The Fate of the 1890 Population Census, Part 1,” Prologue Magazine, Vol. 28: 1; online edition, National Archives (https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1996/spring/1890-census-1.html : accessed 25 March 2018).