A Baseline Database
Philip Ruth, Research Coordinator
March 13, 2022
As we ramp up our effort “to collect, assess, and preserve lost narratives of African American residents of Centre County from 1800 through 1950,” we are focused on compiling a database of Centre Countians identified as “Black” or “Mulatto” on federal census schedules recorded at the beginning of each decade starting with 1800 (the year of Centre County’s establishment). When census data recorded in 1950 are released to the public on April 1, 2022, we will be able to identify Centre County residents decennially over the course of one-and-a-half centuries.
We think this database will prove extremely useful as we try to discover and understand “how African Americans came to Centre County, what their lives were like here, and where those who moved away made new homes.” Federal census records are a primary means of identifying individuals who were alive at least 72 years ago, their social relations, and their residential and occupational situations. Decennial census data can also be used to discern otherwise invisible patterns in shifting population numbers and geographic concentrations.
In compiling a census-derived baseline database of Centre Countians of color, we are building on the work of historians and genealogists active in recent decades, including Constance Cole, Jacqueline Melander, Sue Hannegan, and the late Daniel Clemson—each of whom delved deeply into the minutiae of Centre County census schedules (especially those recorded during the period 1800-1880), then made their most significant findings accessible to other researchers and history aficionados, such as the late Rev. Dr. Donna King. When we are confident our 1800-1950 database is reasonably complete and corrected, we will also share it with the public, perhaps through the agency of a genealogical or historical society.
In order to gauge the level of effort required for populating a database with thousands of data generated over the course of fifteen census enumerations, I took on the task of creating a database from records compiled in a single census year: 1860. I chose that enumeration without much deliberation, only mindful that it was closest to the outbreak of the Civil War, and aware that 1860’s enumeration was only the second (1850’s being the first) in which data for every person (not just every household) were entered in a separate line item.
I populated the database by scrolling through Centre County census sheets digitized and posted online by Ancestry.com, locating individuals whose race was recorded as either Black (indicated by a B) or Mulatto (M). (Maybe a member of our group will post a blog discussing the many justice issues around citing race in census enumerations, which persist to this day!) I then copied the associated indexed digital entry for each of those persons and pasted the entries into a Google Sheets file. The process was not entirely straightforward, as I found that some of the individuals identified as persons of color on the scanned census schedules were not so identified in the associated indexed digital entry, apparently keyed in by an Ancestry.com indexer. Moreover, having already familiarized myself with some of Centre County’s largest and most prominent Black families of the mid-nineteenth century (thanks largely to the work of Constance Cole), I could see that some of the names entered into the digital index appeared to have been misread or inaccurately transcribed by the indexer. I soon recognized the need to include a column in the Google Sheets file for recording notes pertaining to provisional corrections I made to certain names. Those changes can be vetted after a more complete database is compiled.
I won’t take space here to describe other challenges I encountered in trying to compile a database for 1860, which are likely to face other members of our group (including Penn State students Carmin Wong and Jada Yolich, who are currently compiling databases derived from other census years). I will, however, lay out a few of my preliminary findings (which may need to be fine-tuned as we learn more):
- As of 1860, Centre County was divided into 26 municipalities (townships/boroughs), whose aggregate population totaled 27,000.
- In 13 of those municipalities (precisely half), no persons of color (POC) were enumerated.
- In three other townships, only one POC was enumerated.
- In four other municipalities, only from two to five POC were enumerated.
- Between the 20 municipalities with five or fewer resident POC, only 17 POC were enumerated.
- Only five municipalities were home to more then five POC: Bellefonte Borough (134), and the townships of Boggs (10), Halfmoon (12), Harris (10), Patton (21), and Spring (58).
- Bellefonte Borough, with 134 POC, eclipsed all other municipalities by a wide margin. Indeed, over half of the County’s 262 POC (51%) were enumerated in Bellefonte. Nine percent of the Borough’s 1,477 residents were identified on census schedules as “Black” or “Mulatto.”
Bellefonte’s relatively large POC population as of 1860 (among other years) has been aptly noted in recent studies and publications concerning African American experiences in mid-nineteenth-century Centre County (at least those that I have tracked down and consulted). I have not found in any analysis, however, consideration of the fact that the portion of present-day Bellefonte’s West Ward—which stretches west of Thomas Street on Halfmoon Hill and rises 110 feet above Spring Creek—was in 1860 still part of Spring Township. That is important to note because by 1860 a considerable number of Black families had taken up residence on the east side of Halfmoon Hill. As documented in other sources (which we will specify later), some or all of the residential properties on Halfmoon Hill occupied by Black families as of 1860 were owned by, or had been recently conveyed by, Quaker ironmaster and noted abolitionist William A. Thomas (1795-1866).
Thomas and his family lived in the stone mansion known as the “Wren’s Nest” at the northern base of Halfmoon Hill, within the limits of Spring Township. The ironmaster’s involvement in attracting both free and recently-enslaved individuals to the Bellefonte vicinity (where he had an ironworks requiring laborers) will no doubt be explored in great detail as we proceed with our larger project. For the moment, however, I will note that 58 POC were enumerated in Spring Township in 1860, and I expect to further determine that many or even most of them lived on Halfmoon Hill within an area that would be annexed by Bellefonte Borough in the spring of 1866 (as Bellefonte doubled in size at Spring Township’s expense). If that proves true, we will need to adjust upwards our estimation of the size of the Bellefonte vicinity’s POC population as of 1860.
The inclusion of Halfmoon Hill’s Black population (which actually lived closer to downtown Bellefonte than some of the Borough’s outermost residents) might push greater Bellefonte’s total POC population just prior to the Civil War to 170 or higher. In other words, folding Halfmoon Hill’s population into an assessment of Bellefonte-area demographics in 1860 could show that somewhere closer to 11% of the area’s population were POC. Such a percentage would move the Bellefonte area into the uppermost tier of Pennsylvania boroughs renowned as waystations on the Underground Railroad. According to one tabulation, only Columbia, Lancaster County (12.9%); Uniontown, Fayette County (12.1%), Washington, Washington County (12.1%), and West Chester, Chester County (11.8%), had populations with higher percentages of POC in 1860.
What factors contributed to the establishment, remarkable growth, and eventual dwindling of greater Bellefonte’s African American population? Watch this space for blog posts detailing our efforts to address those questions and many others!
