Population and Vital Statistics

Abstract

The principal sources of population data are official censuses, administrative enumerations, and registration records. The earliest of these in the Americas, at other than a very local level, date from around the beginning of the period covered in the work, and cover Spanish colonial territories which later became independent nations. Individual British colonies in North America also organized enumerations at such a comparatively early date, though the first census covering the United States was not taken until after independence. Such of this early material as has seemed at all reliable, even in a very approximate way, has been included in table 1. Similar material has also been included for the cities shown in table 4.