Recently, I discovered that the pages of the Rhode Island portion of the federal 1820 Census of Manufactures have been made available on FamilySearch.org. The same content for Connecticut and Massachusetts is also online.
Manufacturing in 1820
I’d like to review the state of manufacturing and then explain why I believe this will be very helpful in finding your ancestors.
After the Revolutionary War ended in the 1780’s, the U.S. was anxious to reduce its dependence on British imports which had been, prior to the war, imposed on them by law. Manufacturing of cotton and wool threads and fabrics began at about the same time that the rocky, inadequate farmlands of southeastern New England could no longer support growing families. Younger generations of farmers either fled to states north and west for better farmland, or took on work in nearby manufacturing, sometimes by performing piecework at home, sometimes by reporting for work onsite. This transition occurred over the period of, say, 1790 to 1840. After 1850, the expansion of mills in both size and number tended to be supported more by immigrant labor than by labor pulled from New England’s farms.
The machinery needed for large-scale manufacture of thread and fabric had been duplicated from machinery in use in England in the 1780’s by Samuel Slater and his partners in Pawtucket, Rhode Island (see more here). The invention of the cotton gin in the south in 1793 led to a boom in cotton production and popularity. Slater Mill was quickly followed by an explosion of new mills, small at first, which began cropping up along New England’s waterways … even a very minor river might be made to provide enough water power for a mill. In Rhode Island, in addition to textile manufacture, the manufacture of the machinery itself also became an important industry.
The federal 1820 Census of Manufactures was taken at a disastrous time for New England manufacturing. Embargoes of British manufactured goods put in place during the War of 1812 had led to booming times for New England manufacturing (since there was no competition with British goods) followed by a bust in the second half of the 1810’s when the embargoes had been lifted and cheaper, higher quality European goods flooded back into the market. By the time of the 1820 federal census, the federal government was desperate for facts and figures on the stalled manufacturing sector, perhaps hoping that some solution could be found.
Imagine the job of the poor census taker in 1820, forced to approach every manufacturing business in his territory and inquire about how much they were producing, how business was going, how much equipment they owned, and what their financial situation was. In virtually every case they were met with anger, hopelessness and glorious tales of times gone by, no longer really relevant to the job of collecting data on today’s business. So the data collected was spotty, and sometimes reported on businesses which were actually closed down.
Why this is important
There are three major takeaways for genealogists from this census, explained further in the paragraphs that follow:
- Since the 1820 Federal Census population schedule (the “normal” census, not this special schedule) reports on the number of household members engaged in Manufactures, that should tip you off to whether your family was working in a mill.
- Many Rhode Island children worked in mills in 1820. The idea of child labor was carried over from the farms; children would have worked there, and when the family went to mill work, it was natural for the children to play a role. I think few genealogists really consider this reality.
- In the period 1800-1850 many individuals moved from a Rhode Island farm to a nearby village with a mill. If we continue to look for them in the town where the family farm had been, we will miss a lot.
1820 Census of Manufactures
First, here is access to the 1820 Census of Manufactures. Each surviving sheet is available on FamilySearch.org. It is not particularly easy to use, so give yourself some time to adjust to what you’re seeing.
Here is a typical census page: a report of the “Natick Turnpike Manufacturing Company” in Warwick, found on page 103. Note that these standard questions were used for all entries, although in some cases the form was copied into handwriting.
Next, let’s review those three points.
1820 Federal Census
Mills could be in any town since the requirement was an appropriate water source. They were sometimes in areas that would be considered rural and sometimes in large towns like Pawtucket and Providence. Because of the boom-and-bust nature of the early mills, owners may have retired to a life of obscurity after 1820.
To check out an ancestor’s source of income in 1820, consult the regular (population schedule) 1820 federal census. Each page actually is a two-page spread. Look for the following columns (image below) in between the Free White Females columns and the Slave columns. The columns report the number of persons in the household engaged in Agriculture, the number in Commerce, and the number in Agriculture. While most farms had side businesses and specific skills being offered, most of that would be attributed to agriculture. Seeing it attributed to manufactures shows you that the household was doing more than making sides of beef and wheels of cheese – maybe they were making shoes in the winter or, year-round, sending family members to a local mill for work or doing piecework within the house for goods needed at a nearby mill.
This snippet of information would not tell us what the particular line of work was, but that’s where the Census of Manufactures comes in. You can look for the particular town to see if any businesses were reported.
Children worked in mills in 1820
Using the “Digest” pages, a quick calculation shows the following numbers of individuals employed statewide in manufacturing:
- Men: 655
- Women: 742
- Boys & girls: 1381
I have searched in many places for a definition of “boys & girls.” I find no surviving instructions for this section. My guess, and it is really just a guess, is that a man was 18 or over. A woman was 18 or over, and most likely not married since some listings referred to them as “young women” and some as “marriageable” women. Which would mean a boy or girl was 17 or younger. There’s always a possibility boy and girl meant 16 and under because many children worked from a very young age. If someone has better evidence about this I would love to have it here in the comments for readers to see.
Mostly, I think we need to get our heads around the fact that children from as early an age as possible worked, if not in official jobs then around their farms, or were “bound out” to work outside their family. Public education in Rhode Island was not too bad in cities, but quite behind in more rural areas. There were numerous private schools around the state which obviously would never serve mill workers.
Most Rhode Island mill workers were living with their families, but some lived in boarding houses or with relatives because few people had transportation to a mill; they needed to live nearby. This became more true as time went by and the mill buildings got larger; the idea of placing “piecework” in households became less common, and reporting daily to the mill became more common.
The migration to mill villages
By 1820 the growing mill towns that attracted Rhode Islanders were Providence, Pawtucket, Warwick (especially the area that became West Warwick), Norwich, CT, and nearby Fall River (Troy) MA (which fell at various times in Rhode Island and Massachusetts). But almost any area could, and did, have mills. Check out your location of interest in the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission guides to historic architecture and resources around the state. They provide village-by-village guidance and maps for the changing landscape of each town.
The bad news is, moving from farms to industrial jobs meant that property was, in many cases, no longer owned; our ancestors became renters. Industrial depressions and crises kept their incomes unstable. As a result, deeds and probate tend not to exist for the mill folks.
Genealogists should widen the scope of records searching to areas surrounding the town where their ancestors spent the 1700’s. To the extent possible, do statewide searches for vital records. Places of burial became more scattered as the families no longer owned the family farm, and would bury their loved ones in the new village where they resided. Newspapers might ignore those new to town. Note that the state census of 1865 reports a Rhode Island town of birth for each person enumerated.
In closing
I hope this census might prove helpful to those with early Rhode Island roots, and help them imagine the many changes faced by their ancestors in the early 1800’s.
Illustrations in this post are taken from Robert Grieve and John P. Ferland, The Cotton Centennial, 1790-1890 (Providence: Reid, 1891).
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