|
|
The Forgotten Texas Census:
The First Annual Report of the Agricultural Bureau of the Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics, and History, 1887-1888
Edited and with an introduction by Barbara J. Rozek
A wide-angle portrait of Texas in the 1880s is typically a
difficult picture to capture. But a unique government document
of more than three hundred pages does it as well as our
imagination will allow by providing the statistics and data
to make it possible. In 1887, a state bureaucrat - Lafayette
Lumpkin Foster - used his position as head of the Department
of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics, and History to create
a compendium of wide-ranging information for Texans and people
interested in Texas. It was a treasure trove then and even more
so now for the modern reader and researcher. Open the pages of
his First Annual Report of the Agricultural Bureau and you have
a unique window into understanding the people, towns, counties,
railroads, and farming experiences that made up
late-nineteenth-century Texas. The Texas State Historical
Association presents this document, out-of-print for more
than one hundred and ten years, as the latest in its Fred H.
and Ella Mae Moore Texas History Reprint Series.
Rare for a document of its era, this agricultural report
notes, in a county-by-county format, questions of gender,
labor, and ethnicity not available anywhere else. What did
female teachers earn compared to male teachers? How many
hired laborers worked in the fields and what was their
average length of employment? How many divorces and
marriages took place in 1887 in Zapata County? What
churches were represented? This report will provide the
recorded answer, plus give the insightful researcher the
ability to compare statistically one county with another.
How many Norwegians, Mexicans, Germans, or Jews lived in
each county? How many families were "white"? How many
"colored"? Race, ethnicity, and gender are just a few
categories to be explored by the person interested in
describing the expansive, developing countryside of Texas
in the final quarter of the nineteenth century.
In addition to the county tallies, Foster and his bureau
employees provided a forty-page overview of state
institutions, mineral resources, geography, and miscellany.
Their efforts included a series of tables marshaling the
statistics into accessible form, while the report also
included a letter by Commissioner Foster explaining why and
how the report came to be. For the modern reader a
contemporary introduction is provided, placing the report
in its historical context and pointing to its unique
existence and potential for researchers. With the goal of
cutting state expenditures, a subsequent Texas legislature
restricted the collection and publication of the kinds of
information Foster wove into his survey. Thus, this 1887
Census of Texas is our best stop-camera picture of the
state. It has been forgotten on dusty shelves behind a dull
cover and title, but is now available as The Forgotten
Texas Census.
_________________________________________________________
BARBARA J. ROZEK received her Ph.D. from Rice University
and is currently assistant editor for the Papers of Jefferson
Davis, a documentary editing project at Rice.
Number Nineteen: Fred H. and Ella Mae Moore Texas History
Reprint Series
|
 |
The Forgotten
Texas Census
|
|
|
|
|
|
