The 1850 Logan County, Virginia Census

Enumerated by James G. Perry, Jul-Oct 1850

Contents

Most of the information in this website is presented in table form. If your
browser does not recognize tables, this data will be very difficult to read.

• Overview
• Schedule I - Free Persons
• Schedule 2 - Slaves
• Access to Data
  1. Heads of Household
  2. All Persons Index
  3. Page Index
  4. Calendar Index
• Sources

Other Files

• Dingess Family
• Hatfield Family
• Lawson Family
• Perry Family

Overview

On July 18, 1850 James G. Perry began his enumeration of the citizens of Logan County, Virginia for the 7th decennial census by the federal government. As he started out, he encountered a cultural technology and population structure far different from what a traveler would now find. Roads were virtually non-existent, consisting mostly of rough paths trailing beside the watercourses. Rivers and creeks drained generally northward to the Ohio River and followed two main drainage systems: the Guyandotte River in the east and center, and the Tug Fork of The Big Sandy River on the west. Along each of these rivers a simple road ran roughly north and south alongside the river; a single intersecting route ran up from the mouth of Pigeon Creek on the Tug Fork east to the county seat on the Guyandotte River, then northeast to Boone County. Goods were carried in wagons on the three roads, by horseback along the trails, or in push canoes carrying cargoes of furs and ginseng up and down the rivers. The County of Logan was larger in 1850, comprising what would later include Mingo County on the west and the "foot" of Lincoln County to the north. Even so, the area spanned only about 45 miles from north to south and an equal distance east to west.

The job guidelines were simple. Every person was counted at their usual place of abode on 1 June 1850, including those temporarily absent. If a person was deceased on the day the census was taken, but alive on 1 June 1850, he or she was enumerated; if a person was born after 1 June 1850, he or she was not enumerated even though present on the day the enumerator visited. All information was accepted without proof as given, and if the family was temporarily absent or otherwise unavailable, the informant could be a neighbor or other person who had knowledge of the family.

Free persons were listed on Schedule I, slaves were listed on Schedule 2; Indians not taxed were not counted. The printed tally sheets allowed for enumeration of 42 free persons per page on Schedule I and two columns of 42 slaves on each page of Schedule 2.

Free Persons

Schedule I. - Free inhabitants in "Dist. No 32" in the County of "Logan"
of "Virginia" enumerated by me on the ______ day of ______ 1850. "James G. Perry" Ass't Marshall.

1. Dwelling-houses numbered in the order of visitation.
2. Families numbered in the order visited. A household was defined as a separate inhabited tenement under one roof. If there was more than one family in the house, they were to be listed as one household unless there were separate entrances.
3. The Name of every Person whose usual place of abode on the first day of June, 1850, was in this family. First listed was the father and mother, followed by the oldest child, next oldest, and so on until all the children were counted. Other family members, boarders, laborers, or domestic servants were listed last. In a boarding house or hotel, the landlord was listed as the head of household, followed by the tenants.
4. Age. Age as of the last birthday prior to 1 June 1850. If under 1 year old, the age in months was listed as 1/12, 2/12, ... etc.
5. Sex. M or F for male or female.
6. Color. White, black or mulatto. For white persons this was left blank by most enumerators, but James Perry usually listed a "W" at the top of the column, followed by ditto marks through the page.
7. Profession, Occupation, or Trade of each Male Person over 15 years of age. For males over fifteen, the principal occupation could be listed, or the article he produced. The denomination of clergymen was specifically listed. Although the guidelines did not require it, James listed occupations for 12 of the 20 female heads of household.
8. Value of Real Estate owned. Value of real estate property irrespective of liens.
9. Place of Birth. Naming the State, Territory, or Country.
10. Married within the year. Marked with a slash if the person was married within the year.
11. Attended School within the year. Marked with a slash if the person attended school within the year, Sunday school excluded.
12. Person over 20 yrs of age who cannot read & write. Marked with a slash if a person over 20 could not read or write. If a foreign person could read and write a foreign language, he or she was considered literate and not marked.
13. Whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper, or convict. The guide to enumerators specified that, since "interrogatory might give offense" (Barabba, p. 14), the county records were to be consulted for this information.

Slaves

Schedule 2. - Slave inhabitants in "Dist. No 32" in the County of "Logan"
of "Virginia" enumerated by me on the ______ day of ______ 1850. "James G. Perry" Ass't Marshall.

1. Names of Slave Owners. The owner, listed in the same order as on Schedule I, was the person in whose family the slave was employed. If slaves were owned by more than one owner, only one was listed. The purpose of the entry was to document the number of slaves, not the owners.
2. Number of Slaves. The slaves of both sexes and of each age belonging to such owners were listed. Names of individual slaves were not used, only numbers.
3. Age. The age as of the last birthday prior to June 1, 1850 was listed. If the slave was born within the last year, the age was listed as the number of months old on 1 June 1850.
4. Sex. M or F for male or female.
5. Color. B for Black or M for Mulatto.
6. Fugitives from the State. Information was entered in this column if there were unrecovered slaves who had absconded within the year.
7. Number manumitted. Entered here was the number of slaves who had been declared free persons within the year previous to 1 June 1850. The slaveowner was specified even if he or she owned no slaves at the time of enumeration; in that case no entry was made in column 2.

Access to Data

This on-line archive of the census enumeration of Logan County, Virginia in 1850 is organized by individual page files to mimic the census itself. Schedule I pages range from 118 to 160 as stamped on the upper right of the front leaf of each page. Although he could have divided the district into "known civil divisions," as mandated by the census act (Barabba, p. 1), James Perry did not differentiate the various regions, and placed "Dist. No. 32" or an ornate calligraphic line as a ditto through the entry on all the pages.

Some aspects of the record are simplified here to facilitate presentation of the information:

• Columns 1 and 2, Dwelling-house and Family, are identical on all pages, here represented as a single column, "Dwelling."
• Since all persons censused on Schedule I were White, Color is omitted here.
• Where James Perry omitted information on the value of real estate, "$", a dash is placed to mark the field.
• Slash marks in the final columns: "Md" - Married within the year, "Sch." - School within the year, and "Illit." - Cannot read and write, are rendered as the numeral 1.
• "Notes" provides information from Column 13 (Whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper or convict), links (out and back) to the Slave schedule where family members were slaveowners, and links (out and back) to family biographies.
• On Schedule 2, James Perry entered no information in columns 6 (Fugitives from the State) and 7 (Number manumitted) of Schedule 2, so these columns are omitted here.

So that an analysis of naming patterns could be carried out, first name and last name are presented in separate columns although originally a single column. Stamped page numbers from the printed schedules were used as the framework for this compilation. Front and back leaves of the stamped pages (A and B in some published indexes) can be inferred by the placement of the date in the Notes field. The Census Bureau placed penciled numbers on alternate pages prior to microfilming, and these are given in Notes.

James G. Perry's penmanship was often difficult to decipher, but every effort has been made to transcribe the census exactly as written. "Geo." or "Wm." are not lengthened to "George" or "William." Neither is "Wmson" changed to "Williamson" where the former is somewhat confusing; "Caada" is not changed to "Canada" even where the former is clearly in error. The user must occasionally use considerable imagination in the reading of the census.

Links out of the census pages are of two kinds. On census pages slave-owners are indicated as such on the right margin as clickable links to Schedule 2; from within the slave schedule, there are links back to the slaveowner in Schedule I and links to index pages. Where Family Names are underlined as links, clicking will lead to various notes or short biographies of the family.

There are two indexes to gain access to the pages from the names of censused persons:

• Head of Household Index
• Complete Index

Index to Heads of Household (43kb)

All Persons Index

Complete Index
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Page Index

Jump to page ...
118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160

Calendar Index

Sources:

• 1850 Federal Census - Virginia, National Archives Microfilm Publication M 432, Roll 956.
• 1850 Federal Census - Virginia Slave Schedules, National Archives Microfilm Publication M432, Roll 989.
• Barabba, Vincent P., Director, Bureau of the Census. Twenty Censuses: Population and Housing Questions - 1790-1980; U. S. Department of Commerce, 1979, pp. 91.
• Spence, Robert Y. The Land of the Guyandot - A History of Logan County; Harlo Press: Detroit, MI, 1976, pp. 576+.
• Swain, George T. History of Logan County, West Virginia. Kingsport Press, Kingsport, TN. 1927, pp. 385.

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David J Webb
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Copyright 1999 by David J Webb

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This page was last updated on 31 January 1999