Excerpt from Report to the Committee of the City Council Appointed to Obtain the Census of Boston for the Year 1845: Embracing Collateral Facts and Statistical Researches, Illustrating the History and Condition of the Population, and Their Means of Progress and Prosperity

I have carefully examined, as far as existing records would permit, the details of every census of Boston, abstracts of which are contained in the Appendix, and no such mode of estimation was adopted until 1835. The males in Ward 9 (now 8) that year, were more then the females, while in all the other Wards, except 3 and 4, the females exceeded the males. One of the census takers (the same person who took the State Census of the Ward in 1840) says in his re port, in 1835, that one of the difficulties they had to contend with was to ascertain the number of the floating population, particularly the seafaring men. These they have obtained from mutually questioning the inmates of the houses where they resided when at home and they further say that they are satisfied they have not erred in over estimating the number of that part of the population. Here then is the first introduction of this mode of estimating, not enumerating, the' seamen. It was followed, as already shown, in the State and National Census in that Ward in 1840, and in the National Census, with enlarged Iiberality, in Ward 2.

In the official census of the United States, a number em ployed in navigation of the Ocean is stated. And among the documents, annually printed by Congress is one contain ing the number of seamen registered in each port of the United States. From these documents, the following state ment is compiled. These figures are given not as worthy of much reliance as facts, but as matters deserving preservation in this connection.

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