Interesting Numbers

I took another look at the census data and came up with some interesting numbers. In 1850 there were 38 people in 17 different occupations that were listed in the census. In 1870 that number grew to 84 people in 26 occupations. A huge jump in the numbers for such a small town.

Now, of those 84 people in 1870, 29 were domestic servants and another 29 were "keeping house", the latter being housewives. An odd coincidence.

Of the 29 domestic servants, all but one were black, Hermie Brown being the only white woman who was 15 years old. The age range of the servants was large, 9-65 years old with an average age of 25.

Over half of the 84 in 1870 were not on the 1860 census. This suggests that people were not only setting up new residences in Port Tobacco but were either bringing their servants with them or possibly hiring on newly freed slaves (quite possibly some of their own).

This isn't really new news since this was a pretty common practice but I wanted to show what information you can get from the census when you really look at it.

More to come later on the census data.

- Peter