I am looking for the number of African Americans in Dayton, Ohio from 1805 through 1850.
IPUMS NHGIS provides county-level census summary statistics from 1790-onwards that can be used to determine the number of non-White persons living in Montgomery County, Ohio in each decennial census from 1810-1850. No sub-county census data is available prior to 1910 on IPUMS NHGIS. We recommend that new users review the detailed FAQ page as well as the short video tutorials that are part of the user guide in order to familiarize themselves with the website and the Data Finder tool. You will need to add a data table to your data cart for each decennial year separately (i.e., 1810, 1820, 1830, 1840, and 1850) that summarizes race by county.
It’s important to keep in mind that each census differed in the way it enumerated persons of different races. In particular, Black Americans were tabulated separately depending on whether they were free or if they were slaves. Below is the wording used for tabulating each of these different racial categories for each decennial census. IPUMS NHGIS identifies race by grouping White persons into a White category and all other persons into a Nonwhite category.
1810 census: free White persons, slaves, and “all other free persons, except Indians, not taxed”
1820 census: free White persons, slaves, “free Colored persons”, and all other persons, except Indians not taxed
1830 census: free White persons, slaves, and free Colored persons
1840 census: free White persons, slaves, and free Colored persons
1850 census: White, Colored (free), Colored (slave)
I was also able to find the compendiums for the 1820 and the 1840 censuses which included summary counts by race and slave status for the town of Dayton, Ohio. You can also find household-level data in the IPUMS USA 1790-1840 household full count file.
Thank You Ivan! I will review the pages to learn how to obtain this data. Have a great rest of the day.
