I am looking for township boundary shapefiles for the census years between 1850 and 1880. Do these shapefiles exist in IPUMS database? Or they don’t but it can be constructed with some extra effort? Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Dear Sam,
We do not have township shapefiles for 1850-1880 in the IPUMS databases. Unfortunately, finding maps for the 19th century is incredibly difficult! The Census Bureau created beautiful county subdivision / MCD maps starting with the 1930 census. Prior to that, we have lists of county subdivisions / MCDs by census but no maps. We tried to scour various sources of historical maps but, outside of a few states, we typically failed to find maps.
Sincerely,
Dave Van Riper
IPUMS