For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.
My grandmother Fannie M. Turner was an enumerator for the 1910 US Census in Montgomery, Alabama. She was 22 and lived with her mother and younger sisters in Montgomery, although not in the district she enumerated. Her grandmother Eliza Allen lived in that district. I was looking at the entry for Eliza when I first noticed that my grandmother was the enumerator. I found a newspaper article online about the appointed census takers.
APPOINT CENSUS TAKERS
ENUMERATORS. FOR MONTGOMERY ARE NAMED.
Supervisor At Washington Approves Designations Made By Director Swanson of Second District After Examinations Are Undergone.
The directors of the census at Washington has provided additional designations by Dr. C. Swanson, the supervisor of the Second Alabama District of the following named persons to act as enumerators in the counties mentioned:
Baldwin- Stanley M. Waters, W. D. Durant, Nell G. McKenzie, Cornelius A. Gaston, Jay B. McGrew.
Conecuh- Henry W. Pruett.
Covington- S. P. Barron, Rochford S. Parks, W. O. Searcy, Will C. Grant, J. Herbert Jones, Benjamin F. Parker, Gordon M. Brown, William B. Combs, David A. Beasley, John R. Cravey, Hilary D. Childre, John F. Phillips.
Montgomery- City – Whites: Albert S. Ashley, E. F. Davis, James C. Westbrook, Leopold Loeb, Thomas Robinson, R. Brownlee Centerfit, Charles S. Spann, Louis Lyons, Edgar W. Smith, Mrs. Fannie B. Wilson, Handy H. McLemore. Thomas M. Westcott, Alto Deal, Miss Gene Finch, Frank G. Browder.
Negroes- To enumerate negro (sic) population only – Gertrude V. Wilson, Ell W. Buchannan, Fannie M. Turner, David R. Dorsey.
Montgomery county- outside city – Whites: William F. Allen, Frank McLean, William T. Davis, William Tankersley, James F. Robertson, James A. Stowers, Charles A. Goodwyn, William C. Ozier, O. P. Davis, Miss Oralee Naftel, Ansley L. Stough, Henderson H. Norman, Joseph K. McClurkin, William A. Johnson, John H. Kennedy, J. W. Martin, Thornton E. Gilmer, Thomas B. Barnett, William D. Calloway.
Wilcox county- -Leonard L. Godbold, Fair J. Bryant, John H. Malone, John W. Pharr, W. E. Dilger, D. C. Murphy, James D. McCall, H. C. Pearson, R. L. Vaughn, R. H. G. Gaines, Danuel G. Cook, Joseph R. Harper, Joseph R. Harper, J. F. Fore, Leonard W. Hardy, Arthur Lee, William A. McLean, B. F. Watts, Jr. E. F. Spencer, Emmett L. Gaston, John C. Seltzer, F. R. Albritton, Eugene E. Williams, William J. Sessions.
Wilcox county- William J. Edwards.
For a very few districts in Montgomery and Wilcox counties Anal action has not yet been taken on the selection of enumerators, but will be in time for the enumeration.
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Fannie M. Turner began work April 15, 1910 and enumerated her Aunt Abbie and her Grandmother Eliza on pg 2. She finished on April 26. Mrs. Fannie B. Wilson (white) completed the enumeration of Montgomery, Ward 4 by counting the white residents on several pages after that. As noted in the newspaper article, Negro enumerators could only count Negroes. I wonder how that worked. Did my grandmother go to the door, note that they were white and tell them someone else would return to count them later? Did the neighbors alert her? Since she was already familiar with the neighborhood, did she already know where the white people lived or did all the white residences live in the same area?
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Fannie Turner was my maternal grandmother. She managed her Uncle Victor Tulane’s grocery store in Montgomery, Alabama from the time she graduated from State Normal School until she married my grandfather in 1919. I wish I knew the stories she could have told about that two weeks of counting the citizens in Ward 4.
Interesting. The last census, they just sent out notices with a link and we did them online.
Yes, here too. And there were no interesting questions. It will not do our descendants a bit of good! The old censuses had many interesting questions that help round out our knowledge a bit.
what are some of the interesting questions you’ve found in previous censuses?
What grade did you complete? How many children did you birth? How many are living? Your birthplace, your parents birthplace, occupation, can you read and/or write, attended school in the last year, income, owned home, maritial status, how many years have you been married?
These are helpful if you are trying to figure out the life of people you never knew.
That’s cool to see your grandmother as the enumerator instead of one of the counted people on a census form. My mother did that work in 1970.
It is interesting. Did your mother enumerate your household?
We had a friend who enumerated us in 1990, I think or maybe 2000. Unfortunately I’m pretty sure I’ll never get to see those census forms. I could go ahead and fill them out now, just so the information would be available earlier than 70 years from.
That’s so interesting about your grandmother only being allowed to enumerate people of color. I do believe that whites and POC lived in different neighborhoods at the time.
Yes, but there were areas where the two came together. Edges
I worked on the census here in Australia in 2016. I was a “Special Area Supervisor” and was involved in “enumerating large and complex non-private dwellings (NPDs). These are places where people may be staying on Census night that are not private dwellings; examples of this are large hotels, resorts, hospitals, tertiary colleges and halls of residence, large boarding schools and nursing homes.”
It was interesting to see it from the other side.
I am amazed that the enumeration was done by race – lots of grey areas I would have thought and it would have added complexity.
Censuses are very useful for family history. Sadly in Australia historic censuses are destroyed so we do not have them for research. I get a lot out of UK and US censuses.