What are the last columns with the slashes?

Yes/no questions answered with a tick: attended school, cannot read, cannot write, male citizen over 21, and male citizen whose right to vote is denied. Count the columns from the right-hand edge of the page to be sure which one the tick is in.

Why does my formerly enslaved ancestor have a different surname in 1880?

Surnames were chosen, changed and recorded inconsistently in the decade after emancipation. Match households by given names, ages and neighbours rather than the surname alone.

Record columns

Reading the 1870 US census, column by column

1870 is the first federal census after emancipation, and so the first that names every formerly enslaved person. The schedule grew to eighteen columns: foreign-born parents, month of birth and of marriage within the year, and male citizenship. Many of these are tick columns, and reading an 1870 page is largely a matter of counting which column a tick sits in.

Date: June 1, 1870
Columns: 18
Handwriting: Spencerian, often in a lighter, faster hand than 1860. Tick marks are slashes, crosses or a 1.

The columns in order

The 18 columns of the 1870 US census in the order they are printed, and what the clerk wrote in each.
#	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	Father foreign born	A tick if the father was born outside the United States.
12	Mother foreign born	A tick if the mother was born outside the United States.
13	Month born within year	Month of birth for a child under one year old.
14	Month married within year	Month of marriage if within the census year.
15	Attended school	A tick or the number of months if the person attended school in the past year.
16	Cannot read	A tick for a person over 10 who could not read.
17	Cannot write	A tick for a person over 10 who could not write.
18	Male citizen 21+	A tick for a male citizen aged 21 or over, with a second column for one whose right to vote was denied.

What to watch for on this form

The first census to list formerly enslaved people by name; surnames were often newly chosen and may differ from later censuses.
Father/mother foreign born are tick columns — a tick in the wrong column is the commonest transcription error on the page.
Still no relationship column.
Known to be an undercount, especially in the South and in big cities; a missing family in 1870 is not evidence of anything.

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

Rows to CSV

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.

Rows

Questions

What are the last columns with the slashes?: Yes/no questions answered with a tick: attended school, cannot read, cannot write, male citizen over 21, and male citizen whose right to vote is denied. Count the columns from the right-hand edge of the page to be sure which one the tick is in.
Why does my formerly enslaved ancestor have a different surname in 1880?: Surnames were chosen, changed and recorded inconsistently in the decade after emancipation. Match households by given names, ages and neighbours rather than the surname alone.

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.