History of the Census

In the early 1980s, Gerda Stroh Walker and Delbert D. Amen, on behalf of AHSGR, transcribed the information collected on the large sheets of Hattie Plum Williams’ 1913-1915 Census of Germans from Russia Living in Lincoln, Nebraska. These family group sheets contain the same information as the original census, but are smaller in format and easier to search. The only changes made were to correct gross misspellings of names and villages. The indexed list for these group sheets was originally published in the 1984 publication by AHSGR: Clues, Part 2. 

Lincoln, Nebraska was a major distribution center for thousands of German immigrants from Russia. While many families made Lincoln their permanent home, others eventually journeyed on to neighboring towns and states. A young student of sociology at the University of Nebraska, Mrs. Hattie Plum Williams, became interested in this ethnic group and made these people her prime area of study. She realized there were inaccuracies in the 1910 Federal census due to the language barriers and a reluctance on the part of many to trust the “officials.” Hattie Plum Williams decided to conduct her own comprehensive census among the Germans from Russia living in Lincoln.

The survey was begun in the late fall of 1913, after the “beetfielders” had returned to Lincoln from their summer jobs in the sugar beet fields. Williams continued working on the census until it was time for the workers to return to the fields in the spring of 1914. She resumed again in the fall of 1914 and probably continued into early 1915. This census is unique because it is the only known census ever made of Germans from Russia in any American community.

The information collected by Hattie Plum Williams was used to write her sociology dissertation, A Social Study of Russian Germans, which is available for loan through the AHSGR library or for purchase from the online purchase page.