US Black Heritage 1880 Project

Profile managers: Emma MacBeath [send private message], US Black Heritage Project WikiTree [send private message], and Christy Melick [send private message]

US Black Heritage Project

... ... ... is a part of US Black heritage.

Please add the US Black Heritage sticker to every profile for every Black American you create. Add the code below, including the curly brackets, right under the biography heading; it will look like the sticker to the right. This helps us count the number of profiles and honor their heritage.

{{African-American Sticker}}

About

Goal: To create a profile for every Black American enumerated on the 1880 US federal census.

Total profiles needed: 6,580,793

Why the 1880 census? This is the first census record where household relationships are spelled out. It is also close enough to the time of slavery to help us link enslaved ancestors to descendants. Many formerly enslaved ancestors will still be alive.

Who can help? Every WikiTree member!

How? Click on the spreadsheet linked below for the state you want to work in. On that spreadsheet, put your Wiki-ID in the member column for the person/family you will be creating profiles for. Make sure to add the {{African-American Sticker}} to all profiles you create. If you don't plan to fully build out each profile, please consider using at least one of the USBH maintenance categories. Create profiles, then add the new Wiki-ID to the spreadsheet. Repeat!

Note: The following locations are missing from the 1880 census:

• Alaska, Hawaii, Oklahoma
• Kentucky = Crittenden County
• Michigan = Oscoda and Sanilac Counties
• Missouri = St. Louis
• New York = Bronx and Madison and Tioga Counties, New York City (includes all 5 boroughs, Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Kings)
• North Carolina = Guilford County
• Ohio = Allen County
• Utah = Rich County
• Virginia= Henrico and York Counties

Available 1880 Spreadsheets

Many states will have only one spreadsheet with a tab for each county. The states with larger populations will have multiple spreadsheets. More spreadsheets/tabs will be added as people have time to create them.

If you would like to help us set up spreadsheets, please see the Spreadsheet Instructions Help Page.

The number below each state name is the approximate number of Black Americans who were enumerated for that state in 1880.

"List incomplete" means not everyone from the census is accounted for on the spreadsheet yet because the spreadsheet only included heads of households - we are working to add everyone to these spreadsheets.

Thank you to our spreadsheet creation helpers for states without space pages

• Eva Head Western states that needed heads of households converted to full lists
• Leslie Lapham Rhode Island
• Denise Nawa'a Iowa

Completed States

• Arizona
• Dakota Territories
• Idaho
• Maine
• Montana
• New Hampshire
• Oregon
• Utah
• Vermont
• Washington
• Wyoming

Statistics

See US Black Heritage 1880 Census Project Statistics page.

FAQ's

1. Do I need to create profiles for household members who were not Black?
   You are welcome to create profiles for them if you'd like, but for the purposes of this project, a household can be marked as "Complete" when all of the Black household members and their family members have profiles. So if there is a white person in the household who is related to a Black person (spouse, parent, etc.), the profile should be created. But if there is a white person who is not related (i.e. a landlord-renter or an employer-employee situation), you do not need to create the profile for the household to be considered complete.
2. Someone on this spreadsheet is not Black. Should I create a profile for them?
   Again, you're welcome to create the profile if you'd like, but you can also just add a note in the WT ID column on the spreadsheet saying "not Black" and go on to the next person on the sheet. Race in the 1880 census was recorded with just a single letter, and often the W for White and the M for Mulatto look very similar and get transcribed incorrectly. Also, people who do not fit in to the four "official" race categories for the 1880 census (white, colored, Chinese, Indian) are sometimes recorded as Black/Mulatto - this is frequently the case for Latinos. It's always best to find several records if possible to confirm if a profile should get the {{African-American Sticker}} in these cases.
3. I found someone who is not listed on the spreadsheet.
   You can go ahead and add them to the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet creation depends on FamilySearch having the person's residence location and race correctly transcribed and indexed, so there will inevitably be some people who were missed.
4. The location I want to work on does not have a spreadsheet.
   Please contact Christy Melick or Emma MacBeath and let us know which location you're interested in. We will put it on our to-do list and will let you know when the spreadsheet has been created. Please be patient - we only have a few volunteers who fill these requests. While you wait, please consider working from the existing spreadsheet(s) for the same state. If you are interested in creating the spreadsheet yourself, please see the US Black Heritage 1880 Project - New Spreadsheet Instructions page.
5. Are we using census categories for this project?
   These are not an official part of this project nor does the USBH project manage census categories - we are just asking people to use general location categories. However, if you feel like a census category would be helpful for your work with the 1880 census project, you may use them. Many 1880 census categories already exist (you should just be using county-level census categories, not specific towns/cities), but if the one you need does not exist yet, Nat Durbin has kindly offered to create them, at least in early 2024 as this project gets going, so that G2G is not flooded with requests. Please send her a private message with "1880 Census Category" in the subject line and make sure to include which county you need a category for and a profile ID of a profile that needs the category.
6. What location category should I use for these profiles?
   You can always add the location category for their residence location in 1880. If you find additional records, you can also add location categories for birth/marriage/death locations or any other location they lived for a long period of time. Location categories should always be for the most specific location you know, but always a county or smaller (township, towns, cities, etc.) - please do not add state- or country-level categories to profiles. Location categories should not be created for census-designated places (CDP's) - Wikipedia pages for locations will often say if it is a CDP or other type of location and each county on Wikipedia usually has a "Communities" section that will list CDP's separately from other locations (example. If a person's 1880 residence location is a CDP, you may be able to determine which township the CDP is a part of and use the township category. If you can't determine a township to use, you can use the category for the county. Generally, all US counties should already have categories. If the township/town/city/etc you need does not already have a category, they can be requested on G2G.
7. Is the USBH Project going to do similar projects for other census years?
   There are no plans for this currently. 1880 was deliberately chosen because (1) it is the first census with family relationships stated, so it allows us to create profiles in family groups, and (2) it is close enough to 1865 that many formerly enslaved people were still living and recorded in this census - this project will help us create the profiles we need to eventually be able to more systematically start making connections between people's lives/records after Emancipation and their lives/records before that when they were enslaved. Our Heritage Exchange team is already hard at work on creating profiles and processing documents for enslaved people and this project will be a cornerstone of the USBH project's work to create the post-Emancipation profiles we need to begin making those connections more frequently. Additionally, the 1880 census alone will keep us busy for a while - there were more than 6.5 million African Americans enumerated in the 1880 census and when this project began in 2024, we had ~265,000 African-American profiles on WikiTree.
8. Where can I ask questions about how to participate in this project? You can ask questions on G2G, just be sure to use the tag black_heritage so that US Black Heritage Project leaders will see it. There is also an 1880-us-census channel in the Challenges and Events section of WikiTree's main Discord server that can be used by any WikiTreer and an 1880-census-project channel on the USBH project's server that USBH project members can use.
9. Is there a sticker or anything for people who lived in Canada for part of their lives?
   Profiles for Black people who lived parts of their lives in both the US and Canada can use both the {{African-American Sticker}} (placed right below the Biography heading) and the category [[Category:Black History Canada]] (categories are placed above the Biography heading). If you are creating profiles for additional family members who only ever lived in Canada, they would just get the Black History Canada category.
10. How do I add categories? How do I know which category to use?
    The Categorization help page has a section called How to Categorize a Profile that explains how to add a category. The US Black Heritage Project Categories page has a lot of helpful information about how to pick location categories and maintenance categories, especially in the section Categories to Add to Each USBH Profile. We also have a more detailed help page for our maintenance categories and the section about maintenance categories for the Profile Creation Cycle (Needs More Records, Needs Profiles Created, Needs Biography) are the ones we'd really like people to focus on for the 1880 Census Project.
11. What should I do when I create a profile for someone who has an 1880 census record but doesn't have a spreadsheet available for their location?
    • At this time, there are no plans to track these profiles in any way (i.e., a long list or a maintenance category). We expect participants to search for duplicates before creating new profiles. See this discussion for more details.
    • If this is a location where you work frequently, please contact Christy or Emma to request that a spreadsheet be created for the location. We'd like to prioritize creating spreadsheets for locations where people are actively working.
    • You can make it easier for these profiles to be found when the spreadsheet is created and someone does begin working on it: Please make sure you add a location category and/or 1880 census category for the place where they lived in 1880. If their name was spelled very differently in the 1880 census, you may want to consider adding the alternate spellings in the Other Nicknames and Other Last Names field so it comes up when people search to see if the profile already exists.
    • When beginning work on a new county, please do a WikiTree+ search to find old profiles in that location and add them to the spreadsheet before starting to create new profiles. You can use this search -in the searchbox on the left, replace Ross with the name of the county you will be working on and Ohio with the name of the state you will be working on. Then click on the blue "Get Profiles" button. This should give you results of people who lived in the county at some point, though you may get false positive results if the county name is common.