The following is a transcription of the 1855 Illinois State Census for Hamilton County.  I transcribed the census from digital photographic images of the original census book that I produced at the Illinois State Archives in Springfield, IL in 2003 and 2004.  I would like to thank the staff at the Archives for being very helpful during my visits there.  For more information on the Illinois state census, click here.

The 1855 Illinois State Census recorded the head of the household and head counts of the members of the household broken down by gender and age range.  The census for Hamilton County was completed by John S. Kinnear on 21 Sep 1855 (unsure of start date).  His handwriting was generally legible although sometimes certain letters were hard to decipher.  Questions in the transcription are noted with an underline.  Also, he often corrected a column mistake by changing a '1' to a '0', thus the number '0' appears several times in the transcription.  Each census page covers two page numbers in the census book (odd number on the left side, even number on the right).  There were few mistakes in the Total column and on the Total line on each page.  A discrepancy between the recorded total and the actual total is noted with the total being shaded in a different color.  Since the totals were probably produced at a later time after the actual enumerations were recorded, the enumerations are probably more reliable than the totals.  An italic 0 means a total was left blank when it should have contained a number.

Feel free to contact me with any comments or questions.  I am working to get the census images online and will hopefully have that completed soon.