> Also available in Spanish: https://cubaresearchproject.com/es/all-databases/enumerators-and-staff-of-the-cuban-censuses-of-1899-and-1919/ # Enumerators and Staff of the Cuban Censuses of 1899 and 1919 Search 5,544 people who worked on the Cuban censuses of 1899 and 1919. Most were enumerators, the men and women who went from house to house, and each of those entries gives the province, the municipality and the barrio or area the enumerator covered. The rest are the supervisors, inspectors, clerks, typists, interpreters and messengers of the census offices, each with the post they held. The censuses of Cuba did not publish the names of the people they counted. They did publish the names of the people who did the counting, and for many families that is the only place an ancestor appears in a census report at all. An enumerator had to read and write well and was normally assigned to the district where they lived, so an entry here places a named person in a named barrio in 1899 or in 1919. ## About the source **The 1899 census** was taken under the United States military government and published as the [Report on the Census of Cuba, 1899](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1900/dec/1899-census-cuba.html) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1900). Its list of employees has 1,643 names: Lt. Col. J. P. Sanger, the director, and the seven people of his office; the six provincial supervisors and their staff; and 1,608 enumerators across the six provinces of the time, Pinar del Río, Habana, Matanzas, Santa Clara, Puerto Príncipe and Santiago de Cuba. **The 1919 census** was taken by the Republic of Cuba and published as the Census of the Republic of Cuba, 1919. Its list has 3,901 names: 644 in the Office of the Director General in Havana, from the Director General to the cleaners and watchmen, and the inspectors, instructors and enumerators of the six provinces, by then named Pinar del Río, Habana, Matanzas, Santa Clara, Camagüey and Oriente. Both lists were transcribed by [CubaGenWeb](http://www.cubagenweb.org/census/index.htm), the oldest Cuban genealogy website, from copies supplied by Miguel Ángel Fernández González, vice-president of Hispagen. CubaGenWeb worked from the English editions of the two reports, which is why the posts are in English. ## How these records were recovered CubaGenWeb published this list through a small Java program that ran inside the reader's web browser and drew a searchable table. Web browsers stopped running Java programs of that kind about ten years ago: Chrome removed the feature in 2015 and Firefox in 2017. Since then the page has shown "Please wait a few moments for the data to load" and nothing more, and the list could not be searched by anyone. The names were never lost. The file the Java program used to read was still on CubaGenWeb's server. Cuba Research Project wrote its own programs to read that file directly, the way the old program did, and to turn every row into a record that can be searched here alongside the other collections. Nothing was retyped, so no new transcription errors were introduced. Every record keeps the row exactly as CubaGenWeb published it. ## Things to keep in mind 1. Names are spelled as the reports printed them. CubaGenWeb did not correct them, and neither have we. The 1899 report in particular has many errors, such as "Gillermo" for Guillermo. Try more than one spelling. 2. The same person can appear more than once. Some enumerators were assigned to more than one district, and instructors were often given a district to enumerate as well. Each assignment is its own record. 3. In the provincial lists it was sometimes unclear whether a word was a second given name or a first surname. CubaGenWeb made its best judgement with the help of a dictionary of Spanish surnames, and says so. 4. The provinces carry the names of their year. Puerto Príncipe in 1899 is Camagüey in 1919, and Santiago de Cuba in 1899 is Oriente in 1919. 5. "District" means two different things. In 1899 it is the judicial district. In 1919 it is the code of the zone the enumerator was given, such as B-233 or F-479. Each record says which one it is. 6. In 1899 the last column often describes the ground covered instead of naming a barrio, for example "Vigia 2nd part; San Ramon & Ceiba" or "north city 1st part". 7. Abbreviations in the 1919 office list are written out here: "ODG" is the Office of the Director General, "Stat. Dept" the Statistical Department and "Elect. Reg. Dept" the Electoral Register Department. ## Thanks Our thanks to Ed Elizondo, who has run CubaGenWeb since 1996 and transcribed these lists, and to Miguel Ángel Fernández González, who supplied the pages they were transcribed from. [Visit CubaGenWeb's page about the census employees.](http://www.cubagenweb.org/census/index.htm)