Teaching With Documents, Volume 2

Contents:

Little House in the Census: Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder

Every 10 years since 1790, the U.S. Government has taken a census to enumerate the population so as to apportion seats in the House of Representatives. Census enumerators canvass their districts house-to-house, collecting information about individuals and households on large forms called population schedules.

In each decennial census, Americans from the famous to the unsung and the infamous appear, including favorite figures of literature. Laura Ingalls, Almanzo Wilder, and their families of the popular Little House on the Prairie series were not merely characters of book and television. They were real people who appeared in the census many times, including those of 1880 in the Dakota Territory and 1900 in Missouri.

The information briefly tallied in the census reports gives us glimpses of the drama so richly and lovingly expanded upon by Laura Ingalls Wilder in her tales. For example, in the 1880 census, the records show that Mary was blind, but provided "help in keeping house." Enumerators in that census were instructed not to make such a note unless a daughter contributed substantially to the welfare of the household.

Thus, an imaginative researcher can surmise that Mary lived a productive life despite her blindness. One can confirm this hypothesis by reading the Little House books, learning that Mary attended and graduated from the Iowa School of the Bend.

The census sheets shown are two pages of the hundreds of thousands of pages in the custody of the National Archives. The National Archives holds original enumeration schedules from 1790 to 1870 and microfilm copies of the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 schedules. The microfilm copies of all these schedules are available to researchers. Most of the 1890 census was destroyed by fire in 1921, but microfilm of surviving fragments is also open for examination. To protect the privacy of people enumerated during a census, the records are closed to research for 72 years. The release date for the 1930 census will be 2002. The schedules are part of the Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29.

The Ingalls and Wilder families can be found in the 1880 census of the Dakota Territory, Kingsburg County, T9, roll 113, enumeration district 87, supervisor’s district 15, pages 146a and 147c. In the 1900 census the married couple, Laura and Almanzo, appears in tire schedule of Missouri, Wright County, T623, roll 908, enumeration district 152, supervisor’s district 8, page 226a.

Census records for many states are incomplete. Before 1830, often only the number of persons in an enumeration district was forwarded to Washington, DC. Schedules from 1790 through 1840 give names of the heads of households only; other family members and slaves are tallied by age and sex. With each succeeding census, additional information was gathered, as can be seen in the examples from 1880 and 1900.

The National Archives has microfilmed all the available census schedules and the indexes to them, and positive microfilm copies are availableat a modest price. These microfilm rolls are arranged alphabetically by state and thereunder alphabetically by county. Usually, all of the schedules for one county are on the same roll; some rolls contain records for several counties. You may get ordering information by writing to Product Development and Distribution Staff (NWCP), National Archives and Records Administration, 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20408. Microfilm copies of census schedules are also available for use in the research rooms of the National Archives regional facilities. In addition, many state archives, state historical societies, and university and public libraries have collections of census microfilm for researchers’ use.


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TEACHING ACTIVITIES

Vocabulary Development

1. Many terms in your explanation of the census and in this document need to be identified for students. Ask students to locate the following terms in the documents and to use classroom resources (textbooks and reference books) to explain each term: census, document, enumeration district, incorporated, mortgage, nativity, owned free, population schedule, and supervisor’s district.

Analyzing the Document

2. Instruct students to examine the documents.

a. Ask students to figure out the column headings, the number of families represented, their place of origin, their level of education, and their economic status.

b. The 1880 census gives Laura’s age as 13, the 1900 as 32. Both censuses were taken in June. Which is correct? How do you account for the error?

c. Using the questions from the 1900 census, direct students to conduct a census of their own households.

d. Direct students to compare and contrast the responses to the questions in 1880, 1900, and the census the students made of their households. Discuss with them similarities and differences and ask them to hypothesize explanations and generalizations based on their census information.

e. Ask students to brainstorm a list of other resources they could use to substantiate their theories.

Map Skills

3. Ask students to extract geographical information from the population schedules of 1880 and 1900 to answer the following questions.

a. In what area of the Dakota Territory did the Ingalls family live?

b. In what area of Missouri did the Wilder family live?

c. Estimate the number of miles that Laura Ingalls Wilder traveled when she moved from the Dakota Territory to Missouri.

d. On a map, use colored pushpins and yarn or highlight lines to illustrate where the Ingalls and Wilder parents came from and trace the families’ moves from where the parents were born to Missouri. (For a more complete tracing, students may wish to refer to the Little House books for clues.)

e. Follow-up: On a world map, use yarn or highlight lines to illustrate the movement of all the people enumerated on this page of the 1900 census from their places of origin to Wright County, MO.

Research and Synthesis

4. Ask students to examine the census of 1880 (or 1900) for their county. Direct students to write a paragraph describing the lifestyle of a typical family in that county in 1880 (or 1900) based only on information provided by the census. Students might include such topics as work, family, employment, and migration patterns.

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Chicago: "Little House in the Census: Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder," Teaching With Documents, Volume 2 in Teaching With Documents: Using Primary Sources from the National Archives, ed. Wynell B. Schamel (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Trust Fund Board for the National Archives and Records Administration and National Council for the Social Studies, 1998), 74–75. Original Sources, accessed March 28, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=ZY88BL6PPWYV7YU.

MLA: . "Little House in the Census: Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder." Teaching With Documents, Volume 2, in Teaching With Documents: Using Primary Sources from the National Archives, edited by Wynell B. Schamel, Vol. 2, Washington, D.C., National Archives Trust Fund Board for the National Archives and Records Administration and National Council for the Social Studies, 1998, pp. 74–75. Original Sources. 28 Mar. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=ZY88BL6PPWYV7YU.

Harvard: , 'Little House in the Census: Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder' in Teaching With Documents, Volume 2. cited in 1998, Teaching With Documents: Using Primary Sources from the National Archives, ed. , National Archives Trust Fund Board for the National Archives and Records Administration and National Council for the Social Studies, Washington, D.C., pp.74–75. Original Sources, retrieved 28 March 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=ZY88BL6PPWYV7YU.