Center for Technology and Teacher Education - Social Studies Module: Death and Dying

Occupations in the 1860s

Materials Needed

Historical Background:

The U.S. Constitution mandates that a census be taken every ten years. Census takers go door to door, interviewing the heads of each household and recording a variety of information about each individual living there. In 1860, the census taker asked for the name, age, race (black, mulatto, and white), occupation, birthplace, dollar value of "real wealth" (land and buildings), and the dollar value of "personal wealth" (such as slaves, books, furniture, tools). The census taker also assigned a family and a household number to each individual. There could be more than one family per household, and in general, servants, tutors, and farm hands who lived with their employers were not recorded as belonging to the same family as their employers.

Center for Technology and Teacher Education, University of Virginia,

This module created by Alice Carter of the University of Virginia..