From the Census site:
| Rank | Place | Population |
| 1 | New York city, NY | 33,131 |
| 2 | Philadelphia city, PA | 28,522 |
| 3 | Boston town, MA | 18,320 |
| 4 | Charleston city, SC | 16,359 |
| 5 | Baltimore town, MD | 13,503 |
| 6 | Northern Liberties township, PA | 9,913 |
| 7 | Salem town, MA | 7,921 |
| 8 | Newport town, RI | 6,716 |
| 9 | Providence town, RI | 6,380 |
| 10t | Marblehead town, MA | 5,661 |
| 10t | Southwark district, PA | 5,661 |
| 12 | Gloucester town, MA | 5,317 |
| 13 | Newburyport town, MA | 4,837 |
| 14 | Portsmouth town, NH | 4,720 |
| 15 | Sherburne town (Nantucket), MA | 4,620 |
| 16 | Middleborough town, MA | 4,526 |
| 17 | New Haven city, CT | 4,487 |
| 18 | Richmond city, VA | 3,761 |
| 19 | Albany city, NY | 3,498 |
| 20 | Norfolk borough, VA | 2,959 |
| 21 | Petersburg town, VA | 2,828 |
| 22 | Alexandria town, VA | 2,748 |
| 23 | Hartford city, CT | 2,683 |
| 24 | Hudson city, NY | 2,584 |
Chris Travers says:
Cool! My town today has the same population as a major city in 1790!
March 30, 2010, 6:29 pmtroll_dc2 says:
If you put together all of the places listed that are now part of another city today, Philadelphia was the largest city in 1790. In addition to the 28,522 who lived between Vine and South Streets from river to river, there were the 9,913 in Northern Liberties and the 5,661 in Southwark (today’s Queen Village).
When the city of Philadelphia merged with Philadelphia County in 1854, the population of the city tripled. Many of the neighborhoods today with names suggestive of a separate existence in fact had been boroughs (villages), townships, or districts. Examples are Manayunk, West Philadelphia, Bridesburg, and Kensington. See here for a complete list.
March 30, 2010, 6:42 pmDavid McCourt says:
troll_dc2 says: “If you put together all of the places listed that are now part of another city today, Philadelphia was the largest city in 1790.”
Maybe not. New York in the 1790 census is New York County (Manhattan) only. If you include the other parts of what is now NYC, you get the following (per this http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1790g-01.pdf) :
Brooklyn (King’s County) 4405; Queen’s (Queen’s County) 5394 (counting only the towns of Newtown, Flushing and Jamaica; the other towns being part of what is now Nassau County, L.I.); The Bronx (Bronx County) 2266 (counting only the towns of Westchester and Yonkers, then part of Westchester County); Staten island (Richmond County) 3835. The total additional population is 15,900, for a grand total of 49,031 in what is now New York City, vs. 44,106 for Philadelphia plus the Northern Liberties plus Southwark.
Are there are other parts of present-day Philly not included in those three? Check here: http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/decennial/1790.html
March 30, 2010, 7:42 pmrb1971 says:
@troll_dc2: Yeah, I noticed that too. When I looked at Google maps I assumed “Hudson City” was going to be part of today’s NYC but was somewhat pleasantly surprised that I was wrong.
March 30, 2010, 7:43 pmRandy says:
I’d be curious (only mildly so) to find out whether these numbers included slaves or freed slaves.
March 30, 2010, 8:55 pmDan D says:
Clearly, this was a summer census. Many of the New Havenites were summering on Nantucket, bumping their hometown down a notch in the rankings.
March 30, 2010, 8:57 pmNowMDJD says:
The outer boroughs were not part of the New York metropolitan area in any meaningful sense. Brooklyn was across the East River, accessible only by ferry, and there were no steam ferries. There wasn’t the sort of interdependence you’d expect. From Lower Manhattan to the Bronx was 12 miles, and the Bronx was across a river as well. Some people, like Hamilton, had houses in the exurbs, which would be about where Columbia University is now. I read that he stayed in the city during the week and went home on weekends.
I believe the Philadelphia suburbs listed were closer and more accessible than this, but I can’t say for sure.
March 30, 2010, 9:14 pmJohn D says:
The categories were:
names of heads of families
free white males of 16 years & upwards, including heads of families
free white males under 16 years
free white females including heads of families
all other free persons
slaves
To give an actual example from the census, one Henry Henderson of the Dock ward of New York City had a household comprising 3 free white males 16 or older, 2 free white males under 16, 7 women, and 5 slaves.
There was a sizable slave population in 1790 New York. Sara Livingston had 9. Ann Ludlow had a residence with 8 white females (no men) and five slaves. James Striker (of Harlem) also had 9 slaves (in a household comprising 1 white man over 16, 1 under 16, 3 white women, and the 9 slaves).
My guess is that the population numbers aggregates everyone, free whites, free blacks, and slaves.
March 30, 2010, 9:14 pmDavid McCourt says:
Around 6,000 slaves are included in the numbers I quoted for (the present-day) 5 boroughs of NY. Freed blacks would presumably be included in the “all other free persons” catagory. Only “Indians not taxed” are not included.
March 30, 2010, 9:27 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
If Hudson City is the present-day Hudson, NY, it hasn’t grown much.
March 30, 2010, 9:34 pmarch1 says:
I wonder whether any of those people have surviving grandchildren.
March 30, 2010, 9:46 pmhf says:
So some states (NC, GA) had no cities, and not even anything we’d call a significant town.
March 30, 2010, 9:50 pmDavid McCourt says:
What amazes me is the peristence of the surnames. I grew up in the Hudson Valley, and looking at the names for the heads of households in 1790, I come across the same names of the people that I knew as a boy: whether they are Dutch or Huguenot names like Osterhout, Hasbrouck, Conklin, Terwilliger, Frere or Elting, or English names like Sears, Crawford, Quick, Millspaugh, or Crist — and 100 others. I look down the census returns and every other name conjures up a face for me.
March 30, 2010, 9:59 pmButternut says:
I am curious (if only mildly so) as to how many in the count included chattel.
March 30, 2010, 10:04 pmSuperSkeptic says:
I am curious (but, admittedly, only mildly so) about what the purpose of noting this is. I’m immediately afraid (but, again, only mildly so) that it may be to show how absurd originalism truly is – because, really, how crazy is it to run a society of 300+ million based on the thoughts and plans of some 200+ thousand 200+ years ago?
March 30, 2010, 10:26 pmAJK says:
It certainly makes you (or rather, me) think about how originalism relates to federalism. Take the McDonald case, for instance — how seriously should we take claims that local regulations should be paramount when the local municipality is twice the size of the entire United States when the second amendment was ratified?
March 30, 2010, 10:44 pmFrank G says:
Some of those places in Massachusetts (Middleborough, Newburyport, Marblehead) are not so much bigger today!
March 30, 2010, 10:45 pmDavid McCourt says:
“how crazy is it to run a society of 300+ million based on the thoughts and plans of some 200+ thousand 200+ years ago?”
Completely crazy, except when compared to running it on the ideas cooked up today by whoever — whether it’s Pol Pot, Francis of Assisi, or Nancy Pelosi — happens to be in charge for the moment.
There were close to 4,000,000 people in the U.S. in 1790, not 200,000. If you are going to chuck out the past wholsale in favor of your (obviously superior) present inclinations, then it is important that you not be off by a factor of 20.
March 30, 2010, 10:48 pmChrisTS says:
SuperSkeptic:
My guess is that it just seemed interesting to the poster.
DanD:
Trust me, no one from New Haven would have been welcome on Nantucket in that era.* Growing up, we were repeatedly shown the headstone of a man who had lived on The Island for about 30 years or more but who had not been born “on Island.’ He died with no relatives on The Island, so The Island put up the stone for him. It read something to the effect of “Farewell, Stranger.”
* Actually, they are not all that welcome, now, although their money is. :-)
March 30, 2010, 10:51 pmTatil says:
Yes, but how many of them were undocumented immigrants? :)
March 30, 2010, 11:16 pmStephen Lathrop says:
It’s a stretch, but maybe not too much. I had a friend (now dead, unfortunately), whose grandfather was born the year Thomas Jefferson died, 1826. His grandfather was 60 when his father was born, and his father was 60 when he was born, in 1946. Had he lived, my friend would have been 63 years old today. Move the whole sequence back 30 years, make my friend 93 years old today, and a newborn in 1790 could have a grandchild alive today.
March 31, 2010, 12:55 amA. Zarkov says:
These figures remind me that the U.S. is becoming too crowded. Do we really need to have 300+ million people here? For those who are enthusiastic about immigration, does the U.S. have an optimum population level? If yes, what is it? If no, do you think some aspect of continued population growth trumps everything else? In other words, your answer is infinite.
Now I know we have a population density of 88.1 people per square mile. This is way smaller than (say) France at 304, the UK at 656, or Japan at 880. The whole world comes in at a median of 134 (median across countries). The most crowded place is Macau at 48,330, and the least (not counting Greenland) is The Falkland Islands at 1. However, I question the denominator for these figures. People don’t distribute themselves uniformly over their countries. Even if they spread out in an absolutely random way (spatial Poisson Process) you would get clustering, and we go beyond that a form of super clustering because immigrants stay in port areas and go where the jobs or welfare is. This causes places like Los Angeles to get super crowded and extremely unpleasant. A lot of places are going to get very unpleasant in the future if we continue a policy of accepting 1 million new people every year legally, and about 50% more of that illegally.
I see no reason the U.S. is obligated to accept ever increasing numbers of people. We pretty much shut off immigration from 1925-1965 and suffered no serious consequences. Not only that, we could always turn it back on if we stopped it and found problems.
March 31, 2010, 1:30 amTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » “Population of the 24 Urban Places [in the U.S]: 1790″ -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: “Population of the 24 Urban Places [in the U.S]: 1790″: From the Census site:Rank Place Population 1 New York … http://bit.ly/aeQMkO [...]
March 31, 2010, 2:10 amSheldon says:
For a global perspective, here are the “Top 10 Cities in the Year 1800″
Name Population
1 Beijing, China 1,100,000
2 London, United Kingdom 861,000
3 Guangzhou, China 800,000
4 Edo (Tokyo), Japan 685,000
5 Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey 570,000
6 Paris, France 547,000
7 Naples, Italy 430,000
8 Hangzhou, China 387,000
9 Osaka, Japan 383,000
10 Kyoto, Japan 377,000
http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201e.htm
March 31, 2010, 9:16 amButternut says:
Cause I thought Randy’s post was patronizing.
But was impressed with your reducing of the individual aspirations of man down to the problems of herd management based upon herd size. Or do I have it wrong, that the design of this country and its government were not intended to allow man to follow his own path?
March 31, 2010, 9:59 amMark Field says:
At least one: John Tyler was b. March 1790, so would have been counted.
March 31, 2010, 10:33 amAmphipolis says:
Northern Liberties and Southwark were next to Philadelphia. The combined population puts Philly way over the top.
March 31, 2010, 10:33 amAmphipolis says:
By the way – I have tracked down ancestors in Philadelphia that were listed in the 1790 census.
March 31, 2010, 10:36 amtroll_dc2 says:
For those who wonder whether Philadelphia was larger than New York in 1791 if you measure population in the lands now covered by the cities, the answer appears to be yes. The population of Philadelphia at that time was 54,391. The city had 28,522, the suburbs had 13,998, and the rest of Philadelphia County had 11,871. I assume that the suburbs do not include any part of today’s suburban counties (Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester), as they are listed separately in the census. See http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1790a-02.pdf
March 31, 2010, 10:40 amDavid McCourt says:
For more local comparison, in 1790 Montreal was about the size of Boston (18,000), and Quebec City a little bigger than Baltimore (14,000), while little York, Ontario (Toronto to be) was smaller than Hudson, NY (less than 3,000). (Twenty years years later we burned York, and got our own White House, Senate, House of Reps, Treasury, etc. torched in return).
But in 1790, Havana (at 51,000) was far bigger than any city in the U.S.
March 31, 2010, 10:41 amtroll_dc2 says:
I see a discrepancy that I cannot explain. The census lists Northern Liberties as having 9,913 people and Southwark as having 5,661. Together, these two next-to-Philadelphia suburbs had 15,574 people. But the census table cited in my 10.40 a.m. post says that the city’s suburbs had 13,998 people. Does this mean that some of the people living in these two places were not considered to be in the suburbs? I do not know.
March 31, 2010, 10:52 amathEIst says:
After all that blabbing above,it comes down to what I was taught in grade school–Philadelphia was the largest city until the Erie Canal opened and then it was New York.
March 31, 2010, 11:24 amDavid McCourt says:
troll_dc2,
The summary you cite says that some 11875 people are in parts of Philadelphia county that are not considered suburbs of the city of Philadelphia (or part of the city itself). Clearly one of either the Northern Liberties or Southwark is included in that number, together with an assortment of other towns/areas to make up the difference. Perhaps Southwark, a municipality in its own right with a history as old as Philly’s, together with areas associated with Southwark, were not considered suburbs of Philly.
Look at the detailed pdf for Pennsylvania returns to puzzle out which.
http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/decennial/1790.html
I find it interesting that Philadelphia shows far fewer slaves than NY: less than 400 vs. more than 6000.
March 31, 2010, 11:48 amDavid McCourt says:
“Philadelphia was the largest city until the Erie Canal opened and then it was New York.”
I’d guess that NYC had passed Philadelphia by 1810 if not 1800, years before a single spade of the canal had been dug.
March 31, 2010, 12:09 pmtroll_dc2 says:
David McCourt, I do not see how Southwark could not have been considered a suburb. Its northern edge was South Street, which was the city’s southern border. Moreover, it was where the Swedes–the original settlers of the area, not William Penn–settled. I got my table from your link. Philadelphia County is quite large; given the population of Bucks (25,401) and Montgomery (22,929) counties at the time, it is quite plausible that the 11,871 people lived in Philadelphia County but outside of NoLibs and Southwark. See page 45 of the document linked for the table for Pennsylvania.
March 31, 2010, 12:17 pmarch1 says:
Mark Field: “At least one [w/ a surviving grandchild]: John Tyler was b. March 1790, so would have been counted.”
Wow, great catch Mark Field. Harrison Tyler not only survives, he looks to be thriving. The reach of generations across the centuries is greater than I had expected. Now I’m wondering what the extremes are worldwide (alas a field ripe for exaggeration and mistakes).
March 31, 2010, 12:33 pmFantasiaWHT says:
How the hell did we win the Revolution?
March 31, 2010, 12:46 pmtroll_dc2 says:
We had better generals and the help of the French.
March 31, 2010, 12:52 pmDavid McCourt says:
troll_dc2,
Southwark might not have been condidered a suburb of Philadelphia if it was considered a city in its own right.
I don’t see the discrepancy you are suggesting. The detail lists 5661 for Southark, 9913 for the Northern Liberties, 28522 for Philadelphia (city), and 10060 for a list of all the other places in Philadelphia county. You object to the way they have sliced and diced them in another list, where they divide things three ways (between City, suburbs and other parts of the county), but the total numbers still add up to the same thing either way. I don’t think you can change that total by positing some mistake where there isn’t one.
March 31, 2010, 2:11 pmptt says:
Next time a thread opens up about the supposed right of privacy in signing a petition, remember this thread and, if you’ve ever lived in a town of 30,000, think about how “anonymous” anything anybody did was.
March 31, 2010, 2:16 pmFrances Smith says:
David McCourt finds it “interesting that Philadelphia shows far fewer slaves than NY: less than 400 vs. more than 6000.”
March 31, 2010, 3:53 pmA major factor, of course, was the influence of the Quakers in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania — who opposed slavery on principle. Also, the Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 was the first emancipation statute in the United States.
PAULV says:
As of 2009[update], Tyler has two living grandsons through his son Lyon Gardiner Tyler (1853–1935). Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr., was born in 1924, and Harrison Ruffin Tyler was born in 1928
March 31, 2010, 5:10 pmHarryEagar says:
I cannot find a number for 1790, but it appears New Orleans would have been in the top 10 if it had been part of the US then. Mobile would have been populous enough to make this list, too, I think, but I cannot think of any other places then existing but not then part of US that would have.
March 31, 2010, 5:42 pmptt says:
Hawa’ii
source (well, at least assertion by Congress): http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode20/usc_sec_20_00007512—-000-.html
Considering that Hawa’ii’s current population is just shy of 1.3 million, it’s hard to imagine that one million people in the late 1700′s didn’t include a least a few population centers much, much bigger than any American city.
March 31, 2010, 7:06 pmA. Zarkov says:
Evidently the 1778 population of Hawaii is the subject of dispute. This reference says there are two models. The first gives a population of 200k – 250k, while the other gives about a million. Notice we have no census only estimates and those are model-based. Those Congressional findings look suspiciously like they are politically motivated, and cherry picked the numbers and history they wanted.
March 31, 2010, 8:29 pmptt says:
While I don’t doubt your suspicion, I don’t find a great deal of comfort in considering a drop of 90% in population over a drop of 98%. Sounds like cherry-picking between a couple awful “cherries” with pretty much identical history.
That was an interesting link. If Cook’s crew estimated the population at 400,000 at first contact, that either means the 200,000 to 250,000 is too low OR that Cook’s crew was pretty bad at estimating OR that enough of the 200,000 to 250,000 were near the areas Cook visited that it skewed their estimate. In any case, with any interpretation, the largest of the native Hawaiian towns must have at least dwarfed the smallest of the top 10 U.S. towns listed in the census (5,661), even if it might not have beaten them all.
March 31, 2010, 9:49 pmBenjamin Hemric says:
troll_dc2 wrote [the added emphasis is mine -- BH]
I see a discrepancy that I cannot explain. The census lists Northern Liberties as having 9,913 people and Southwark as having 5,661. Together, these two next-to-Philadelphia SUBURBS had 15,574 people. But the census table cited in my 10.40 a.m. post says that the city’s SUBURBS had 13,998 people. Does this mean that some of the people living in these two places were not considered to be in the SUBURBS? I do not know.
David McCourt then wrote [added emphasis is mine - BH]:
troll_dc2, Southwark might not have been considered a SUBURB of Philadelphia if it was considered a city in its own right.
I don’t see the discrepancy you are suggesting. The detail lists 5,661 for Southark, 9,913 for the Northern Liberties, 28,522 for Philadelphia (city), and 10,060 for a list of all the other places in Philadelphia county. You object to the way they have sliced and diced them in another list, where they divide things three ways (between City, SUBURBS and other parts of the county), but the total numbers still add up to the same thing either way. I don’t think you can change that total by positing some mistake where there isn’t one.
Benjamin Hemric writes:
I’ve had time to only briefly skim the various related posts in this thread, so I hope I am not off base here, but it seems to me that not only is David McCourt correct, but that this controversy might be a good example of the problem of geographical “presentism” (I only looked up “presentism” just now on Wikipedia — so I hope I’ve chosen the correct word) — i.e., “a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into depictions or interpretations of the past.”
As I understand it, “suburbs” — i.e., almost exclusively residential areas (“sub”-urbs) that are attached for sustenance to a nearby fully developed city (or “urb”) — did not really exist in 1790. In order for sub-urbs to develop, someone had to first invent the technology (or umbilical cord, so to speak) that would allow large numbers of people to live a significant distance from a fully rounded city at an economical price.
Brooklyn Heights, for example, is considered to be one of the world’s first sub-urbs because the institution of a steam ferry service in 1814 allowed large numbers of middle- upper-middle class people to live in a hilltop residential suburb just minutes by steam ferry from their places of business in thriving, bustlin and fully-rounded lower Manhattan. Later in 1831 and 1832, horse drawn omnibuses and horse drawn street cars, facilitated the development of additional suburbs to the north of the then developed portions of lower Manhattan. Years later, elevated steam railroads, commuter steam railroads, electrified trolleys, subways and elevateds and then limited access highways for autos opened up even more areas for sub-urban development.
But until the technology was developed to make them feasible, suburbs (as we conceive of them today) did not really exist.
Wed., March 31, 2010, 10:04 p.m.
March 31, 2010, 10:04 pmA. Zarkov says:
The message I got from the link is we really don’t know the 1778 population. Beware estimates without confidence limits. In many cases model-based estimates are just guessing, gussied up to look to look more credible. They often strongly depend on assumptions which are arrived at by guessing.
April 1, 2010, 3:50 amtroll_dc2 says:
Benjamin Hemric, did you look at the table that I referred to? The table used the word SUBURBS. I relied on its terminology. If you are so right that the concept of suburbs did not exist in 1790, why did an official government table use that term to cover jurisdictions that were neither in the city nor in the “[R]emainder of Philadelphia County”?
I quite agree that one must be careful about the danger of presentism, but my word usage is the same as that used in the 1790 census. The difference between us is that I read the table, whereas you admit that you merely skimmed this thread. I hope that you are more careful when you are dealing with your clients’ interests.
April 1, 2010, 10:05 amBenjamin Hemric says:
A brief recap:
troll_dc2 wrote (in part):
Does this mean that some of the people living in these two places [Northern Liberties and Southwark] were not considered to be in the suburbs? [March 31, 2010, 10:52 a.m.]
David McCourt then wrote (in part):
Perhaps Southwark, a municipality in its own right with a history as old as Philly’s, together with areas associated with Southwark, were not considered suburbs of Philly. [March 31, 2010, 11:48 a.m.]
troll_dc2 then wrote (in part):
. . . I do not see how Southwark could not have been considered a suburb. Its northern edge was South Street . . . . [March 31, 2010, 12:17 p.m.]
David McCourt then wrote (in part):
Southwark might not have been considered a suburb of Philadelphia if it was considered a city in its own right. [March 31, 2010, 2:11 p.m.]
Benjamin Hemric then wrote (in part) [words contained within brackets are added, and some words have been capitalized for additional emphasis -- BH]:
I’VE HAD TIME TO ONLY BRIEFLY SKIM the various related posts in this thread [meaning not only the posts by troll_dc2 and David McCourt, but also posts by others that also indirectly touched upon the same issues], SO I HOPE I AM NOT OFF BASE HERE, but it seems to me that not only is David McCourt correct, but that this controversy MIGHT be a good example of the problem of geographical “presentism” . . . i.e., “a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into depictions or interpretations of the past.”
As I understand it, “suburbs” — i.e., ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY RESIDENTIAL AREAS . . . THAT ARE ATTACHED FOR SUSTENANCE TO A NEARBY FULLY DEVELOPED CITY [in other words, today's understanding, in America, of the word "suburb"] — did not really exist in 1790. In order for sub-urbs [as the term is generally understood in America today] to develop, someone had to first invent the technology (or umbilical cord, so to speak) that would allow large numbers of people to live a significant distance from a fully rounded city at an economical price.
Brooklyn Heights, for example, is considered to be one of the world’s first sub-urbs [in the modern day sense of the word] because the institution of a steam ferry service in 1814 allowed large numbers of . . . . But until the technology was developed to make them feasible, suburbs (AS WE CONCEIVE OF THEM TODAY) did not really exist. [March 31, 2010, 10:04 p.m.]
troll_dc2 then wrote:
Benjamin Hemric, did you look at the table that I referred to? The table used the word SUBURBS. I relied on its terminology. If you are so right that the concept of suburbs did not exist in 1790, why did an official government table use that term to cover jurisdictions that were neither in the city nor in the “[R]emainder of Philadelphia County”?
I quite agree that one must be careful about the danger of presentism, but my word usage is the same as that used in the 1790 census. The difference between us is that I read the table, whereas you admit that you merely skimmed this thread. I hope that you are more careful when you are dealing with your clients’ interests. [April 1, 2010, 10:05 a.m.]
Benjamin Hemric writes:
As mentioned in my previous post, I only had time to briefly skim the various posts in this thread (and thus did not have time to view any links contained in those posts) and I hoped that my comment was not “off base” as a result.
However, now that I have had the time to view the linked to documents, it still seems to me that THIS controversy MIGHT be a good example of the problem of geographical “presentism” (i.e., “a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into depictions or interpretations of the past”) in that today’s understanding of the word “suburb” (and what it means in demographic terms with regard to a relationship to a neighboring “central city”) seems to be clouding and confusing an understanding of the word “suburb” as it MAY have been used in the past. Just because a government document in 1790 uses the word “suburb” does not necessarily mean that it was being used then in the same sense as it is generally understood today — and thus the criteria for areas that “should” or “should not” have been included as suburbs MIGHT have been very different then from the ones that would be logical using the modern day sense of the word.
P.S. — Although many (probably most) posters here at the Volokh Conspiracy are attorneys, just for the record I am not.
Friday, April 2, 2010, 12:53 a.m.
April 2, 2010, 12:53 amtroll_dc2 says:
Okay, so what did the word “suburb” mean as used in the 1790 census? If you know anything about Philadelphia, you would be hard-pressed not to view at least portions of both Southwark and Northern Liberties as suburbs under any definition of the term; they both come hard up against the city’s southern and northern boundaries respectively. Given that the census had categories for both suburbs and the remainder of the county, it is hard to imagine that these two places were not being referred to by the use of the term “suburbs,” since one could scarcely get to any other part of the county without going through them. What evidence do you have that I am wrong?
April 2, 2010, 4:51 pmBenjamin Hemric says:
It seems to me that the issues raised in the April 2, 2010, 4:51 p.m. post by troll_dc2 were addressed in previous posts, among them the following:
troll_dc2 wrote (in part):
Does this mean that some of the people living in these two places [Northern Liberties and Southwark] were not considered to be in the suburbs? [March 31, 2010, 10:52 a.m.]
David McCourt then wrote (in part):
Perhaps Southwark, a municipality in its own right with a history as old as Philly’s, together with areas associated with Southwark, were not considered suburbs of Philly. [March 31, 2010, 11:48 a.m.]
troll_dc2 then wrote (in part):
. . . I do not see how Southwark could not have been considered a suburb. Its northern edge was South Street . . . . [March 31, 2010, 12:17 p.m.]
David McCourt then wrote (in part):
Southwark might not have been considered a suburb of Philadelphia if it was considered a city in its own right. [March 31, 2010, 2:11 p.m.]
April 2, 2010, 8:00 p.m.
April 2, 2010, 8:01 pmDavid McCourt says:
troll_dc2 wrote:
At the risk of beating a long dead horse, I would say that the math is evidence — conclusive evidence. In one place, the census lists the 14 individual places in Philadelpia County (Philadelphia City, Southwark, the Northern Liberties, and 11 other places that I won’t bother to name). The population of each individual place is listed, and the total population of the County is said to be 54,336.
In another place the census has a Summary page for Philadelphia County that lists just three kinds of places: Philadelpia City (28,522), the “Suburbs” (13,998), and “Remainder of Philadelphia County” (11,871). Together, the population of these three places adds up to … some 54,391 — essentially the same number (off by 100 people or less; good enough for government work).
Clearly this second, Summary, document did not include both Southwark and the Northern Liberties as being among the “Suburbs.” We know this because the population of those two places together (roughly 15,500) is more than more the Summary says are in the “Suburbs” (13,900). So, one of the two places — S or NL, but not both — was put in the “Suburbs” category with some other towns, and the other of the two places went into the “Remainder” category, with the (natch) remainder of the towns.
We know you insist S and NL are both suburbs, but they weren’t both counted as “Suburbs” by the census man in his summary. What of it? They both were counted, as is clear from the first, longer list of the 14 places. So, either way you slice it, Philadelphia County’s population still adds up to 54 thousand and change. There is no grand disparity here, and neither S nor NL have been left uncounted in the final totals for the county, which is where we came in.
Luckily, this thread is about to placed in the archive of silence.
April 3, 2010, 3:38 pmStephen Lathrop says:
But the accompanying link says his grandfather was born in 1807.
April 3, 2010, 3:57 pm