The decennial census has always required a large workforce to visit and collect data from households. Between 1790 to 1870, the duty of collecting census data fell upon the U.S. Marshals. A March 3, 1879 act replaced the U.S. Marshals with specially hired and trained census-takers to conduct the 1880 and subsequent censuses.
During the early censuses, U.S. Marshalls received little training or instruction on how to collect census data. In fact, it was not until 1830 that marshals even received printed shedules on which to record households' responses. The marshals often received limited instruction from the census acts passed prior to each census.
Beginning with the 1880 census, specially hired and trained census-takers replaced the U.S. marshals. Door-to-door census by temporary census-takers was the primary method of conducting the census until the U.S. Census Bureau began mailing questionnaires to households in 1960.
As more and more households received and returned their questionnaires by mail, the role of census-taker changed. Today, the majority of households are counted by mailed questionnaires. Census-takers visit places frequented by transient households (shelters and soup kitchens, campsites, etc.) and households that do not return their mailed questionnaires (during the "Nonresponse Follow-Up" phase of the census). As a result, the "Instructions to Enumerators" provided here include the congressional acts U.S. marshalls reviewed during the early census, specially-published instructions for door-to-door census, and lastly, guides used for the limited number of personal interviews conducted during nonresponse follow-up operations.
Postal history State abbreviations at USPS.com shows Indiana used Ia. from 1831 to 1874, then Ind. until June 1963 then IND. until October 1963 then using IN through the present.
A poster for the Tuesday, October 2, 1860, presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas rally held in Fort Wayne, Indiana shows the location as Ft. Wayne, IA showing that IA was used in 1860 as the abbreviation for Indiana.
On Tuesday, October 2, 1860, presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas held a rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Douglas had...
On Tuesday, October 2, 1860, presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas held a rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Douglas had been nominated by the northern wing of the Democratic Party at its Baltimore convention in June after the party split into sectional factions following its failed April convention in Charleston, S.C. “The Little Giant,” as Douglas was called by his supporters, broke political precedent by campaigning on his own behalf. Previous candidates and the other three 1860 presidential candidates let their supports campaign for them, believing it undignified to stump for themselves. Douglas, however, hit the campaign trail, promoting his “popular sovereignty” blueprint for the expansion of slavery into states created from federal territory, arguing for the constitutionality of slavery, attacking Republicans and abolitionists, and playing to the racial prejudice of the white men who would cast their ballots in November.
The crowd in Fort Wayne included city and county residents as well as visitors from surrounding counties who arrived by train, wagon, and on foot. Douglas supporters bragged of an audience of 60,000 for the speech, but a more realistic number was likely 10,000 at all the day’s events. Those included a 2-hour parade of floats and bands before Douglas’s 1-hour speech and a torchlight procession and fireworks after. Douglas did not attend the evening events, but the night concluded with his supporters hanging Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln in effigy in front of the Courthouse.
