Thursday, October 17, 2013

Treasure Chest Thursday - Post 186: 1800 U.S. Census Record for Two Simon Wade Households in Rhode Island

It's Treasure Chest Thursday - time to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The treasure today is the 1800 United States Census record for Simon Wade Jr. (one of my 4th great-grandfathers), and Simon Wade Sr. (one of my 5th great-grandfathers)  in Cumberland, Providence County, Rhode Island.



The Simon Wade (Senior) household entry shows:

*  1 Male over age 45 (certainly Simon Wade (1731-????))
*  1 Female over age 45 (almost certainly his wife, Deborah (Tracy) Wade (1731-????)

Below Simon Wade is the household of Levi Wade (I only have an unmarried Levi Wade, born 1765 to Simon and Deborah (Tracy) Wade in my database - was he married?  This census record indicates he was over age 45).  A mystery here.

Below Levi Wade is the entry for Simon Wade, Jun^r:

*  1 male aged 10 to 16 years (probably son James (1791-1838), but the age range is wrong)
*  1 male aged 16 to 26 years (perhaps a brother of Simon Wade Jr., or a worked on the farm)
*  1 male over age 45 (it must be Simon Wade (1767-1857), the head of household, but the age range is wrong.
*  1 female aged 0 to 10 years (either daughter Catherine (1793-????) or daughter Sarah (1798-????))
*  1 female aged 26 to 45 years (almost certainly his wife, Phebe (Horton) Wade (1772-????))

Simon Wade and Phebe Horton married before 1790 (I don't have a date or place), so James Wade is probably their oldest child.

The source citation for this record is:

1800 United States Federal Census, Providence County, Rhode Island, Population Schedule, Cumberland town, Page 152 (penned, top right) and 466 (stamped, lower right), Simon Wade, Jr. household; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com), citing National Archives Microfilm Publication M32, Roll 45.

While this census record doesn't provide exact ages for the household members, I think that I can estimate who might be in each age and gender group based on all of the information gathered for this family.

I think that these families resided in the town of Foster (on the border with Connecticut), not in Cumberland town (on the border with Massachusetts, north of Providence).  The Simon Wade family was in Foster in the 1790 and 1810 census listings.  There is a "header" for Foster in the census collection before page 156 (penned) and 474 (stamped), and 12 pages of census records follow.  It is possible that the "header" was put in the wrong place when the census was records were collected and filmed.  

As noted above, some of the age groupings on the census records don't exactly match the ages that I think I know...this is one of the problems with census enumerations - either the provider of the information didn't know correct ages or the enumerator may have put the check mark in the wrong column.  The enumerators weren't paid for accuracy, only on the number of persons enumerated.

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Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

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