OK. I know that this will mark me as a total geek, but I recently came across a copy of Census of 1850, which is the first census with information on Utah. The numbers provide a fun snap shot of the Mormon commonwealth three years after its founding.<\/p>\n
In 1850, Utah had a population 11,380. There were 6,046 males and 5,334 females, which puts to rest the tired myth the polygamy was a way of dealing with a surplus of women. Salt Lake was the largest county with 6,157 inhabitants. Toole county was the smallest county with 152 inhabitants. There were 24 “freed coloreds” as well as “26 slaves en route<\/i> for California” who were in Utah county when the census was taken. The population was relatively young. The largest age cohort consisted of those under the age of 30 and there was no one in the territory over the age of 90. Indeed, there were only 57 people over the age of 70.<\/p>\n
In the year prior to June 1, 1850, there were 432 births, 404 marriages, and 239 deaths. There were 2,322 families. I have no idea how polygamy factored into the statistics for birth and families. The doctrine would not be publically taught until 1852, but it was a more or less open secret by 1850. There were apparently no deaf or dumb people in the territory. Utah could, however, boast of 2 blind people, 5 insane people, and only 2 “Idiotic” people.<\/p>\n
Utah claimed one college, but that was probably mostly on paper. In addition, the census lists 13 public shcools supported by a whopping $8,200 in tax revenue, as well as $3,312 from “other sources.” In addtion, Utah had 13 “Academies and Other Schools.” The illiteracy rates seems to have been fairly low, with only 154 adults who were unable to read and write. Interestingly, only one of the freed blacks in the territory was illiterate. (There is no entry with regard to the 26 transitory slaves.)<\/p>\n
Far and away the most common occupation was farmer (1,570) followed by laborers as a distant second (617). There were a fair number of blacksmiths (114) and carpenters (158). There were five brewers or distillers (Oregon territory, with over 13,000 inhabitants had only one) and three book binders. On the other end of the occupational spectrum, the following professions boasted a single practioner: architects, artists, barbers, boatmen, brokers, brushmakers, daguerreotypists, dairymen, drivers, dyers, gold & silver smiths, grocers, gunsmiths, inn keepers, ironmasters, oilmakers, professors, and ship carpenters. There were five lawyers. Interestingly, twice as many inhabitants of the desert outpost described their occupation as “mariner.”<\/p>\n
The entire value of the farm land of Utah in 1850 was set at $311,799. Oxen (5,266) outnumbers horses (2,429) two to one. The biggest crop was wheat (107,706 bushels) and the smallest crops were tobacco (70 pounds grown in Salt Lake county) and hops (50 pounds in Davis county).<\/p>\n
Most interesting, perhaps, are the numbers on churches. The census collected the number of churches and the value of their property for Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics. Thus we know that there were 73 Roman Catholic churches in New Mexico holding property valued at $94,100. (There were no protestant churches in New Mexico.) Other than three people who listed their occupation as “clergyman,” however, there is no record in the census numbers of any religion in Utah at all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OK. I know that this will mark me as a total geek, but I recently came across a copy of Census of 1850, which is the first census with information on Utah. The numbers provide a fun snap shot of the Mormon commonwealth three years after its founding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}