Some said it was a cigarette. Some said it was a conspiracy. But no one really knows for sure what started the fire on January 10, 1921, that destroyed a large portion of the 1890 U.S. federal census.
What everyone agrees on is this: it was a tragedy of immense proportion.
The census, with critical historical information on more than 6 million people in the U.S., was being stored in the basement of the United States Commerce Department. The other census records were inside a fire- and water-proof vault when the flames started, but the 1890 census was sitting just outside its protective walls.
Firemen rushed to the scene to put the fire out, but what wasn’t already destroyed by fire and smoke was drowned in water: 25% was said to have been destroyed by the flames; 50 % by the smoke and water that followed it.
And what happened to the remaining 25%? Most of it was shuffled around from place to place until it was finally destroyed in the 1930s... Read More