1890 Census

1890 census was almost completely destroyed by neglect. The government had all of the 1890 federal census stored in a building in Washington DC and there was a fire in the next building. The building with the 1890 census was flooded by water from the fire next door. The government then left the census for 14 YEARS without looking at it in the damp room in damp Washington DC. A very few pages did survive, but none from Washington State. Having said that I will also say that Washington Territory took a territorial census in 1881, 1883, 1885, 1887, 1889 and 1892. Sadly not all of those have survived, but the Washington State Library is working on a project to put all of the surviving territorial census and indexes to them online. So check on Cyndi's list for the URL of the State library.

Submitted by Celia Tomlin to the Walla Walla WAGENWEB.