Record columns
Reading the 1860 US census, column by column
The 1860 schedule is the 1850 one with a second wealth column: besides real estate the enumerator asked the value of personal estate, so a farmer's livestock, tools and slaves (in the South) show up as a dollar figure. Everything else about reading it is the same: no relationship column, surnames dittoed, and ages as good as the person who answered the door.
- Date
- June 1, 1860
- Columns
- 13
- Handwriting
- Spencerian. The dollar figures in the two estate columns are the easiest numbers on the page to misread (a flourished 1 for a 7, a 5 for an 8).
The columns in order
| # | Column | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dwelling no. | The enumerator's running count of houses visited, not a street number. Several families can share a dwelling. |
| 2 | Family no. | Running count of households. A boarder or servant is listed within the family that housed them. |
| 3 | Name | Surname first, then given name; the surname is often written once and dittoed for the rest of the family. Spelled as the enumerator heard it. |
| 4 | Age | Age at last birthday, as given by whoever answered the door. Infants in fractions ("2/12" is two months). Treat every age as within five years. |
| 5 | Sex | M or F. |
| 6 | Color | W white, B black, Mu mulatto; from 1870 also Ch Chinese, In Indian; later Jp, Fil, Hin, Kor. Written as the enumerator judged, not as the person said. |
| 7 | Occupation | As stated; "keeping house", "at home", "farm laborer", "none". Children "at school". A blank is a blank, not "none". |
| 8 | Value of real estate | Dollar value of land owned, as stated. A farm laborer with 0 and a farmer with 2000 is the usual pattern. |
| 9 | Value of personal estate | Dollar value of everything else owned, as stated. |
| 10 | Birthplace | A state or a country, as the enumerator wrote it: "Ohio", "Ireland", "Prussia", "Bohemia". Pre-1900 abbreviations are frequent (Pa, O, Va, Ind). |
| 11 | Married within year | A tick if married in the twelve months before census day. |
| 12 | Attended school | A tick or the number of months if the person attended school in the past year. |
| 13 | Cannot read or write | A tick for a person over 20 who could not read and write. |
What to watch for on this form
- Personal estate in the South includes the value of enslaved people; the slave schedule itself is separate and nameless.
- Still no relationship column — infer it from order and ages, and check against 1870 and 1880.
- Post-office name is written at the top of each page, often the best clue to where a rural family actually lived.
Abbreviations and marks
- do / " / „ — ditto — the same as the line above
- Hd — head of household
- Wf — wife
- Dau — daughter
- S-in-L — son-in-law
- Bdr — boarder
- Svt — servant
- Na / Pa / Al — naturalized / first papers / alien
- O / R — home owned / rented
- F / M — free of mortgage / mortgaged
- W / B / Mu — white / black / mulatto in the color column
- S / M / W / D — single / married / widowed / divorced
- x, / , 1 — a tick in a yes/no column
- 2/12 — two months old
- Pa, O, Va, Ind, Ky — state abbreviations in the birthplace column
Type one person per line with cells separated by a tab or a |, in the column order above. Blank cells may be left empty; write [illegible] where you cannot read. The CSV is built by the same code the app uses for its export.
Questions
- What does the personal estate value mean?
- The enumerator's estimate of everything owned other than land: livestock, tools, furniture, money, and in slave states enslaved people. It is a rough figure, often rounded to the nearest hundred.
- Why are some 1860 pages missing?
- Several counties' schedules were lost or never returned. If a county is blank, try state censuses of 1855 or 1865 and tax lists.
About this page
Column lists follow the printed schedule or register form; descriptions are in our own words from the National Archives' census instructions to enumerators, the FamilySearch Research Wiki and the usual parish-register handbooks. This is the same column list Cursive Lens reads the page against; a test in the app fails if the two ever disagree. Last reviewed 2026-10-17.