1890 Census Reconstruction
Tarrant County, Texas
on CD-ROM

Project coordinators: Helen McKelvy Markgraf Stephens & Rob G. Yoder

The US Census of 1890 was heavily damaged during a fire in 1921. Thirteen years later, the Census Bureau ordered the destruction of the remaining records. This gap in census records creates a huge obstacle for genealogists.

This CD contains more than 131,000 records taken from 15 sources dating from 1880 through 1900. With this information, you should be able to determine the likelihood that a person or family resided in Tarrant County in 1890, thus working as a replacement for this portion of the lost census.
 

Source documents used:
	1880 Tarrant County Census * 1890 Tarrant County Tax List * 1890 Special Veterans Census ** 1890 Fort Worth City Directory * 1892 Fort Worth City Directory ** 1900 Tarrant County Census * Obituaries and news from the Fort Worth Gazette ** Masonic Membership Records 1889 & 1890 ** The Texas State Gazetteer and Business Directory of 1890-1891 ** D.A.R. Burial Records of Tarrant County ** Pioneers Rest Cemetery Records ** S.E. Tarrant County Cemetery Inscriptions ** Cemeteries of Northeast Tarrant County ** Oakwood Cemetery Records ** Tarrant County Marriage Records, 1880-1900
	* Full transcription included on CD ** Partial transcript or abstract included

System requirements: PC running Windows or Mac running OSX, CD drive, Internet web browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. Problems were encountered on an older Mac running OS9. Best viewed with a screen resolution of 1024 by 768 or 800 by 600 pixels.
 
 

Introduction Genealogists don't usually research their families long before they discover that the US Census of 1890 no longer exists. It was heavily damaged during a fire in 1921 and ordered to be destroyed thirteen years later by the Census Bureau. Years later, a very small portion of the census was discovered to have eluded destruction, unfortunately, this did not include Tarrant County. Since the census is such an important tool in tracing migration and residence patterns of our ancestors, we felt that the gap created by this missing document must be filled by another tool of equal value. In September 1990, the Fort Worth Genealogical Society began a project to construct such a tool. This publication is intended to provide to you a means to establish the fact that a person or family resided in Tarrant County in or about the year 1890. Many people have worked on this project over the years gathering more than 131,000 records from fifteen source from that time period and entering them into the computer. This CD includes three indexes that combine all of this information into an easily searchable format. A problem with the soundex calculator forced us to remove spaces and punctuation from names like De Witt, O'Leary, Mc Dowell, St. Clair and etc.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you, but this was necessary to correct the problem.