1860 Census of Lincoln County -- Finding aid.

The purpose of the following table is to serve as a finding aid when searching for a specific civil district, post office, or dwelling/family number.  It is not a copy of the census itself.

Author's note:  as will be seen below, there were two enumerators who used the same numbering system.  For this reason, I recommend that citations to the 1860 census be given in a fashion similar to the following:
The xxxx family may be found at:  Stamped number 104, Page number 33, Lines 12-18, Dwelling 444, Family 456 in the 12th Civil District (Charity P.O).  [Please note this is a fictitious reference].

An explanation of the table:

Enumerator:  two men took the census.  John H. Steelman (marked S below) enumerated Civil Districts 1 thru 8 and 21 thru 25.  Norris Leatherwood (marked L below) took 9 thru 20.

Hand#: Each enumerator wrote a page number at the top of each page of a double sided leaf and each enumerator started with page 1.  When the leaves were bound together in a book, the pages then were either on the left side or right side when the book was opened (and this was how the microfilming was done).   So, 001R below means that the page was marked "1" by the enumerator, and that after binding and microfilming, that page appears on the right side.  The enumerators did not write the R or L.  Steelman's pages ran from 1-228 and Leatherwood's 1-180.

Stamped Number: at some point, some agency (probably the Census Bureau in Washington) used a mechanical device to stamp the right pages of the entire census book.  This is a unique identifier within the county.  The stamped pages for Lincoln County run from 1 to 204.  Thus there are 408 pages with 40 names per page, equalling about 16,320 white inhabitants.  In the table below, 066B (for example) indicates that Civil District 2 begins on the page after the one stamped 66 and before the one stamped 67.  There is nothing stamped on those left pages, the 066B is a simply a finding aid.

Dwelling/Family: Each enumerator started with Dwelling 1/Family 1 (these are columns on the pre-printed census page).  Steelman enumerated 1/1 thru 1741/1666 and Leatherwood 1/1 thru 1376/1278.  It is quite possible, even probable that both enumerators left out some numbers or duplicated numbers.

Civil District: given in red here and below because the table is sorted by the Civil District as the main finding aid for researchers looking for ancestors in a specific district.  The enumerators did not visit the districts in numerical order, and the binding of the census books split districts and even families onto pages bound in separate places in the book.  As an example, District 2 consists of one page on stamped 66B, continues with one page on 17B, then has one page on 17, then the main section is 18-27B.
The letters next to the CD (like CD 01 A) can be ignored.  They were used for sorting the table.  A means the starting place of the district and B indicates the end.

Post Office: the post office as listed by the enumerator.

Date: each page was dated.  So, it is easy to determine that, for example, Steelman enumerated Civil District 1 from June 1-10, 1860 and finished his portion of the census on 20 August 1860.  Leatherwood also started June 1st and finished August 31st.

Comments/questions are welcome, please contact:
Lincoln County coordinator (George Waller, and do please call me George)

This page was last updated Sunday, 06-May-2007 16:46:23 MDT.