Record columns
Reading the 1900 US census, column by column
1900 is the only federal census that records each person's month and year of birth, and after the loss of 1890 it is often the first sight of a family in twenty years. It also asks how long a couple have been married, how many children a woman has borne and how many are living, and when an immigrant arrived and whether they were naturalized. Thirty columns, most of them short, in a confident Spencerian hand.
- Date
- June 1, 1900
- Columns
- 30
- Handwriting
- Spencerian giving way to the plainer business hand. The abbreviations are standard, so a doubtful word in a coded column is one of a short list.
The columns in order
| # | Column | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Street | Street name, written vertically down the margin and dittoed. |
| 2 | House no. | House number as posted; blank in rural districts. |
| 3 | Dwelling no. | The enumerator's running count of houses visited, not a street number. Several families can share a dwelling. |
| 4 | Family no. | Running count of households. A boarder or servant is listed within the family that housed them. |
| 5 | 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. |
| 6 | Relationship to head | Head, Wife, Son, Dau (daughter), Mother, Father, Sis, Bro, Boarder, Lodger, Servant, Hired man, Son-in-law, Grandson, Adopted dau, Partner, Inmate. |
| 7 | 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. |
| 8 | Sex | M or F. |
| 9 | Birth month | The month of birth as stated — unique to 1900; often wrong by a month, rarely by a year. |
| 10 | Birth year | The year of birth as stated in 1900. Compare with the age column; when they disagree, both are estimates. |
| 11 | 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. |
| 12 | Marital status | S single, M married, W widowed, D divorced; 1910 adds M1 first marriage, M2 second or later; 1950 writes Mar, Nev (never married), Wd, D, Sep. |
| 13 | Years married | Years in the present marriage, as stated. |
| 14 | Mother of how many children | Number of children ever born to this woman, including those who died. |
| 15 | Children living | Number of those children alive on census day. The gap between the two columns is a family's infant deaths. |
| 16 | Birthplace | A state or a country, as the enumerator wrote it: "Ohio", "Ireland", "Prussia", "Bohemia". Pre-1900 abbreviations are frequent (Pa, O, Va, Ind). |
| 17 | Father's birthplace | State or country of the father; the same abbreviations as the birthplace column. |
| 18 | Mother's birthplace | State or country of the mother. |
| 19 | Year of immigration | Year of arrival in the United States, as remembered — often a round number. |
| 20 | Years in US | Years since arrival (1900). |
| 21 | Naturalization | Na naturalized, Pa first papers filed, Al alien; 1930 adds Na, Pa, Al with a year elsewhere. |
| 22 | Occupation | As stated; "keeping house", "at home", "farm laborer", "none". Children "at school". A blank is a blank, not "none". |
| 23 | Months not employed | Months out of work in the census year. |
| 24 | Attended school | A tick or the number of months if the person attended school in the past year. |
| 25 | Can read | Yes or No. |
| 26 | Can write | Yes or No. |
| 27 | Speaks English | Yes or No; when No, 1910 and 1920 name the language spoken instead. |
| 28 | Home owned or rented | O owned, R rented. |
| 29 | Owned free or mortgaged | F free of mortgage, M mortgaged. |
| 30 | Farm or house | F farm, H house. |
What to watch for on this form
- Birth month and year: check them against the age column; when they disagree, the year is usually the more carefully given.
- Mother of how many children / children living: the difference is the number of children who died, which points to burials and earlier censuses.
- Naturalization: Na naturalized, Pa first papers, Al alien. The year of immigration is a remembered year, often rounded.
- Farm schedule numbers in the last column refer to agricultural schedules that no longer exist.
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.
Questions
- How reliable is the 1900 birth month and year?
- As reliable as the person who answered. Years are usually right within one or two; months are often right. Treat the 1900 figure as one more estimate alongside ages in other censuses and a baptism record.
- What do Na, Pa and Al mean?
- Na: naturalized citizen. Pa: has filed first papers (declaration of intention). Al: alien, not yet begun. A Pa or Na points to a court record of the naturalization.
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.