Census Records

Agriculture, mortality, and social statistics schedules are available for the census years of 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880. Manufacturing schedules are available for 1820, 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880. Slave schedules are available for 1850 and 1860. They are arranged by county, and then by political subdivision (township, city, ward, etc.).

The detailed information included in these schedules provides a textured overview of life within each community, adding depth to an understanding of individuals living there.

Nonpopulation Census Access at the Library of Virginia

• Microfilm copies of the Virginia nonpopulation census schedules are available at the Library of Virginia and may be borrowed from the Library through interlibrary loan.

Nonpopulation Census Records Online

Agricultural schedules of 1850, 1860, and 1870 provide detailed information for each farm, including the name of the owner or manager, number of improved and unimproved acres, value of the farm, farming machinery, livestock, and the amount of farm production over the previous year. 

Exclusions: Not every farm was included in these schedules. In 1850, for example, small farms that produced less than $100 worth of products annually were not included. By 1870, farms of less than three acres or which produced less than $500 worth of products were not included.

Information on enslaved individuals was compiled separately for the 1850 and 1860 censuses. The schedules list the name of the enslaver or overseer and the numbers of those enslaved, but not their names. Information includes name and location of the enslaver; number of those enslaved, listed by age, sex, and color; whether a fugitive; whether manumitted; and whether “deaf, dumb, insane, or idiotic.” Most of the slave schedules list the names of enslavers only; however, a few enumerators chose to list the first names of enslaved individuals.

The mortality schedules have detailed information about people who died in the twelve months preceding the census. For example, the 1860 mortality schedules include persons who died between June 1, 1859 and May 31, 1860. The census recorded name, age, sex, marital status, state or country of birth, month of death, occupation, cause of death, and the length of the final illness. Since Virginia did not begin recording deaths until 1853, the 1850 mortality schedule may be the only record of death for some individuals.

Manufacturing schedules in 1820, 1850, and 1860 reported the name of the manufacturer; the type of business or product; the amount of capital invested; the quantities, kinds, and value of raw materials used; the quantities, kinds, and value of product produced annually; the kind of power or machinery used; the number of men and women employed; and the average monthly cost of male and female labor. The 1870 and 1880 censuses recorded such information in greater detail, including, in 1880, supplemental schedules used for specific industries, such as for boot and shoemaking, lumber and saw mills, flour and grist mills.

Exclusions: Small manufacturing operations that produced less than $500 worth of goods were not included.

Social Schedules provide detailed information about communities. In 1850, 1860 and 1870, these schedules indicate for each political subdivision the value of real estate; annual taxes; schools with numbers of teachers and pupils; libraries with the number of volumes owned; name, type, and circulation of newspapers; churches by denomination with building accommodations and property values; cemeteries, including those no longer functioning; societies and clubs with officers listed, membership statistics, and value of property; the number of native and foreign-born “criminals” and “paupers”; and the average wages paid to farm hands, day laborers, carpenters, and female domestics. Note that these schedules provide only statistical data, not information about specific individuals.

In 1880, specialists were appointed to gather most social statistics, and that information was no longer part of the general census enumeration. The 1880 census instead had a supplemental schedule entitled “Delinquent, Defective, and Delinquent Classes.” It included seven separate lists of individuals, by name, with further information about their conditions. The seven categories were “insane,” “idiots,” “deaf-mutes,” “blind,” “homeless children,” “inhabitants in prison,” and “paupers and indigent persons in institutions.”