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(This page's most recent update is May 2026)
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A person who starts researching their family history very quickly runs into the question – ”What Happened to the 1890 Census?
In summary, there was a fire at the U.S. Commerce building in Washington DC, which destroyed a very large percentage of the population schedules from the 1890 federal census. Either fire or water damage eliminated this valuable resource. All that is left is a mere fraction of the population schedules. From these states, only a partial of one or two counties were saved: Alabama, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas.
There are fragments and alternative collections to search, so you aren’t totally lost.
Download the Quicksheet PDF
To obtain the one-page Quicksheet pdf for easy reference, you can download it by clicking on the Download button:
For all the previously published Quick Reference Guides, click on QuickSheets.
If you use Quicksheets often, the Quicksheet Vault puts 390+ of them in one organized place — clean, printable, and easy to reuse whenever you need them. Whether you keep digital references handy or build your own genealogy binder, the Vault makes research simpler. Learn more about the Quicksheet Vault HERE