1865 Illinois State Census

The following is a transcription of the 1865 Illinois State Census for Hamilton County.  I transcribed the census from digital photographic images of the original census book that I produced at the Illinois State Archives in Springfield, IL in 2003 and 2004.  I would like to thank the staff at the Archives for being very helpful during my visits there.  For more information on the Illinois state census, click here.

The 1865 Illinois State Census was taken a few months after the end of the Civil War.  The census recorded the head of the household and head counts of the members of the household broken down by age range and gender.  The census for Hamilton County was completed by George W. Burton on 25 Sep 1865 (unsure of start date).  He seems to have had an assistant since a distinctively different style of handwriting appears in early parts of the census.  Overall, the handwriting was generally legible although sometimes certain letters were hard to decipher.  Some of the letters that were hard to distinguish were:  J and I;  a and o;  m, n, r, and u.  Questions in the transcription are noted with an underline.  Sometimes, a column mistake was corrected by changing a '1' to a '0', thus the number '0' appears a few times in the transcription.  Each census page corresponds to one page number although each page spanned two pages in the census book.  There were several mistakes in the Total White and Aggregate Population columns and on the Total line on each page.  A discrepancy between the recorded total and the actual total is noted with the total being shaded in a different color.  Since the totals seem to have been produced at a later time after the actual enumerations were recorded, the enumerations are probably more reliable than the totals.  An italic 0 means a total was left blank when it should have contained a number.