The Mysterious Case of the 1850 Census

Jane (aka Ginny) Runyon, wife of Joseph, was born December 12, 1766. Multiple journals from Pleasant Hill record her death on August 24, 1850. Jane lived the second half of her life -- a full forty years -- as a Believer, and spent those years at Pleasant Hill in its heyday, before attrition from death and young people leaving the society slowly began the community's decline.

The census for Mercer County, Kentucky was conducted on the 10th of September, 1850. So, I was surprised when I saw that Jane appears in the listing for Pleasant Hill.

Despite dying in late August 1850, Jane managed to be counted in the first and only census she could have been listed in individually by name. In previous years she would have been identified with a check mark under the column for females within the family by age range.

So how can a dead woman appear in the census? The census instructions for enumerators for the year 1850 tells us.

Every decade since 1790, census enumerators working on behalf of the United States government head out into their districts to count the people. And each year, those enumerators are given written instructions as to how to count. The traditional family unit is the typical unit that comes to mind -- a head of household, perhaps a spouse, children, an in-law, a boarder or servant, all in the same dwelling. But what happens when the enumerator has to count dozens, or hundreds, of people living in a larger institution?

"Dwelling houses [are] numbered in the order of visitation," reads the official instructions for 1850. "A widow living alone and separately providing for herself, or 200 individuals living together and provided for by a common head, should each be numbered as one family." 

Given their size and non-traditional living arrangements, I'm sure the counting of Shaker villages presented unique challenges for the enumerators. Luckily for the enumerators, there were just 19 Shaker villages to count in the United States, two of them in Kentucky.

It is in those instructions we uncover the reason why Jane Runyon, 18 days in the grave, made it into the record books in the year of her death: "Under heading 3, entitled 'The name of every person whose usual place of abode on the 1st day of June, 1850, was in this family,' insert the name of every free person in each family, of every age, including the names of those temporarily absent, as well as those that were at home on that day. The names of every member of a family who may have died since the 1st day of June is to be entered and described as if living, but the name of any person born since the 1st day of June is to be omitted."

The enumerator for District 1, Thomas E. Miller, must have not had the details of Jane's month and day of birth as the age recorded for her reads "84." She didn't quite make it to 84 but lived a long and remarkable life nonetheless.

Miller's listing for the Shakers of Mercer County spans nine pages, begins with no remarks and ends with the simple notation: "End of Pleasant Hill or Shaker Village"