[1905 Census Home] 1905 Census Register
Introduction
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(As Printed in the volume Residents of Iowa 1905 Story County.)

Introduction

This Register of Iowa people consists of the names of the residents of the State of Iowa on the first day of January, A.D. 1905. The arrangement is by civil townships and incorporated towns and cities. The several registers are bound together by counties in the alphabetical order of the names of the several townships as the name exists at this date. The incorporated towns are placed following the name of the township in which the town is situated. Where a town is partly within two or more townships it has been the intention to place it following the name of the township in which the larger part of the town is situated. This order has not been followed in the case of the larger cities. Where a city of considerable importance exists the registers for that city are generally separated so as to place the registers of that city in a separate volume. In a few cases more than one volume is made for a city. For the city of Des Moines one volume included the residents of Wards 5, 6 and 7, known as East Des Moines, being the territory situated East of the Des Moines river, and two volumes for the residents West of the Des Moines river, division being made upon the ward lines as the same are now officially constituted. The record of the boundaries of the wards may be found in the city directories of this date. Other cities are divided upon ward lines and their boundaries may be determined by the official directories of this date.

The names appearing in the several towns and township registers are arranged by numbers according to the numbers of cards which were made in the census enumeration for the year 1905. These cards indicate the color, place of birth, naturalization, years in the United States, years in Iowa, conjugal condition, school attendance, literacy, occupation and military service of each person enumerated in the census of 1905. It is the intention to preserve these cards, the Registers serving as indexes to the same. The cards are to be arranged in steel cases by counties, in packages, by an age and sex arrangement indicated by the labels thereon.

The census for the year 1905 has been made under a statute enacted by the Thirtieth General Assembly and under the direction of the Executive Council, the undersigned acting as Director, ex-officio. There registers were designed in part to prove the correctness of the census enumeration, to protect against loss of the original cards by verifying the numbers and to make it possible to verify the enrollment as to its integrity. The result has been that the Registers, on account of the fact that they include the postoffice address and street number of citizens of cities, has made it impossible for fictitious enumeration and the census has the confidence of everyone who has investigated the same.

The future use of these lists of names has been the chief object, however, in providing the Register. Herein is foud a complete list of all the people of Iowa so far as it has been possible, by careful officers, to enroll the same.

The arrangement of families may be determined by the order of the names in almost every case. The instructions under which the enumerators have acted were to enumberate first the father of the family, second the mother, following with the names of children in the order of the seniority of their ages. Investigators will find this arrangement followed generally. This will make possible the determination of the names of the children of nearly every family of the State. These registers it is hoped may find in the State Historical Department a place where they will be preserved for the use of succeeding generations. There having been up to this period no uniform record of the names of people in the different territories of the state, it is believed that the value of this list will in time become very great. Lists of names from previous census enumerations have been discovered in the debris of the attic of the Capitol building which will be place with these registers in the Historical Department, whenever the legislature shall give legal sanction to the same. These registers will include a list of the people at the date of 1850, only four years after the admission of the State into the Union, and also of the people in 1860, immediately preceding the breaking out of the great Civil War, which registers will be of the almost inestimable value in connection with the present registers in the hands of investigators.

The census of 1905 has been made possible only on account of the great interest taken by His Excellency, Governor Albert B. Cummins, and his associate members of the Executive Council, Secretary of State William B. Martin, Auditor of State B.F. Carroll and Treasurer of State G.S. Gilbertson. At the Governor's earnest solicitation a statute making the same possible was enacted, as above indicated, by the Thirtieth General Assembly; and at every step he and his Council have taken the deepest interest and exercised the most painstaking care in the successful execution of the trust. The official report of this census which will be bound as a volume in the series of this set of Registers for the examination of all who have occasion to consult the Registers, will show in detail the extent of the information obtained by this enumeration.

A.H. Davison,
Secretary.

Des Moines, October 4, 1905