US Federal Census Non-Population Schedules: The Mortality Schedule

     Note: All examples in this post were randomly selected from Ancestry. These are not client or personal records.

    Welcome to the first of my guides to working with the various non-population schedules contained in the US Federal Census records. Today's guide will cover the Federal Mortality Schedules. I hope to give you a general overview of the schedule itself, and how to read and interpret the information that you find in those schedules.

    Beginning in 1850 and ending in 1885, the Federal government began appending lists of deaths to the US Federal Census. Since every census divided areas up by county and precinct, the census takers were able to ask individual residents about deaths in the family. If someone was single, or for other reasons not living in a family unit, they may have been missed by the census taker, so if your ancestor doesn't show up where you think they should be, that may be the cause. 

    Note: In addition to the 1880 Federal Mortality Schedule, the government took another Mortality census in 1885 in six states: Colorado, South Dakota, North Dakota, Florida, New Mexico, and Nebraska. If you're researching in these states, you've got a great chance of finding an ancestor.

    I particularly love these schedules, because they have a huge amount of information contained within them, both on a personal and a community level. In many cases, the only death information that we have for a relative can be found in these schedules, until laws establishing Vital Statistics departments were passed.  In some areas, vital statistics such as births and deaths were required to be reported quite early, but in a lot of western and southern states, it isn't until the beginning of the 20th century doctors and families were required by law to report births and deaths; for example, in Pennsylvania, colonial laws required the registration of births and deaths starting in 1682, although enforcement was sparse. On the other hand, Colorado did not have a statewide law enforcing the registration of vital statistics until 1900 for deaths, and 1910 for births, despite earlier attempts dating back to 1875.  

    The schedules were self-reported, meaning that they were given to the census taker by the families of the individuals, and they only counted the deaths from June 1st of the previous year to May 31st of the census year; a mortality schedule for 1850 will only count the deaths that occurred from 1 Jun 1849 to May 31st 1850. 

The information in the mortality schedule is only as accurate as the individual reporting the death. Keep this in mind and evaluate the evidence accordingly.

       The typical mortality schedule will begin with a family number, which refers to a family in the general census records.

In this mortality record from Middletown, Butler County, Ohio we can see that Emma and Charles Long belonged to the third family enumerated on the census for that year. When we go to the census for Middletown, in Butler County, Ohio, it indeed lists the family that these two children belong to:






Next, after the name of the deceased, is the age of the individual at death. Occasionally you will come across fractions in the age column, */12 or */30. These are used for children under a year and infants under a month, respectively. 6/12 is a six-month old, 4/30 is a four month old. You can see an example of this in this 1885 record from Polk County, Nebraska:

Johanna Clifford is listed as 11/12, meaning she died at 11 months old. 

    Next, is the sex of the person and then race: B is black, W is white, M is mulatto. In the 1850 and 1860 schedules only there is a designation for free or slave. Marital status is also included. This mortality schedule is from 1850 in Bibb County, Georgia, and you can see both white and slave enumerated here. I cannot even begin to over emphasize how important these schedules can be for African-American genealogy. Very often this is the only evidence to prove names of slaves and provide proof of a family's location at a given time, as slave schedules do not list the names of slaves.

    Starting in 1870 and continuing to the end of the 1885 schedule, there is a designation asking where the deceased was born and then where his or her parents were born. Using little Johanna Clifford from Nebraska as an example, she was born in Illinois, her father was born in New Hampshire, her mother in Iowa. Earlier schedules only ask for the place where the deceased was born. Then comes the death month, and the occupation or trade of the deceased. Note that slaves are euphemistically referred to as "servants." 

    In all schedules, there is a cause of death listed. Some of these causes of death may look a bit peculiar to the modern eye, and may need translating. There are a number of very good sources to help identify the modern terminology for cause of death; I personally like this site, and the book How Our Ancestors Died: A Guide For Family Historians, by Simon Wills. A few examples of unfamiliar causes of death:

• Putrid Sore Throat: could be diphtheria or complications from strep throat
• Dropsy: edema
• Apoplexy: stroke
• Scarletina: another term for scarlet fever
• Summer Complaint: dysentery or diarrhea, often caused by spoiled milk or dirty infant bottles
• Grippe: influenza
• Lung Fever: pneumonia

In the 1880 schedule there was also a column which asked the length of residence in the county where they died. This schedule is from Larimer County, Colorado in 1880:

The 1880 and 1885 schedules also provide the name of the attending doctor. 

    As you can see, these mortality schedules provide a rich treasure trove of information about our ancestors, information that might easily be missed by other sources. We can also see the health of the community at the time reflected in these records. For example, look at this record from 1885 Polk County, Nebraska:

Here you can clearly see that scarlet fever was going through the community during the winter months, and affected a number of different families, although the Johnson family lost several of their children from the dread disease. This helps us understand that the winter of 1885 must have been a terrifying time for parents in this community, and that at least one family was sadly bereaved several times over. It also helps us make sense of cemetery records that record the deaths of a number of children in the community over a short period of time. 

    I hope that this research guide will provide a comprehensive overview of the information in mortality schedules, and help give family historians another valuable source of information for their own families and the communities that they lived in. As always, I welcome comments and questions!