June 1, 1890

1890 United States census

Official reference date of the 1890 United States census

Nothing was counted on the official census date. 1 June fell on a Sunday, so the door-knocking began the next morning.

A date to answer about

1 June 1890 was the official reference date for the Eleventh Census: household answers were to describe who had their usual residence in each district on that day, and later births, deaths or moves were to be disregarded.

Because it fell on a Sunday, door-to-door enumeration did not begin then. Enumerators started work on Monday 2 June, organised under 175 supervisors, with an ordinary enumeration subdivision containing no more than 4,000 inhabitants.

The machines came later

There is no evidence that Census Office clerks began punched-card tabulation on 1 June. Hollerith's equipment had already been contracted for, but usable population returns could only arrive after field enumeration, and one museum history dates the arrival of data for counting to September.

The cards were not questionnaires filled in by households: clerks later transferred information from handwritten schedules onto one punched card per person. The 1890 census was indeed the first federal census to use Hollerith's electrical system on a large scale — a fact about the project, not about that Sunday.

Which total, and which increase

The final inclusive population total was 62,979,766. The contemporary compendium's directly comparable series excluded people in Indian Territory, on reservations and in Alaska, and reported 62,622,250.

The growth figures follow the same split: 24.86% over 1880 on the compendium's comparable basis, or 25.5% using the later inclusive totals.

The Census Bureau describes the tabulator as carrying 40 recording dials, with an experienced operator processing about 80 cards a minute.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 8 sources not yet audited Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.

What the sources leave uncertain

June 1 is solidly supported as the population reference date, but the listed claim that the Bureau began using Hollerith’s machines that day is unsupported and chronologically implausible.
Official Census Bureau pages differ in shorthand: one calls June 2 the census day because enumeration began then, while the original instructions and National Archives identify June 1 as the date to which answers referred. Both facts should be stated together.
The 62,979,766 total and 25.5% increase use inclusive historical totals. The contemporary compendium’s directly comparable series excluded specified Indigenous populations and Alaska and reported 62,622,250 and 24.86%.