The following is a transcription of the 1855 Illinois State Census for Cumberland 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 Cumberland County was completed by two different census takers.  William A. Chesser completed the eastern half of the county on 27 Sep 1855 (unsure of start date).  This includes pages 1 through 48 in which the columns and headers were hand-drawn.  Unfortunately, he did not include the township/range location on the page headers.  However, when listing a school, he often recorded the township/range in the remarks column.  This, along with the locations of some of the families on the 1850 and 1860 censuses, made it possible to determine a general area for the census pages.  Just remember that the locations listed are just an approximation and not necessarily certain.  James Russell completed the western half of the county on 27 Sep 1855 (unsure of start date).  This includes pages 49 through 88 on pre-printed census pages.  He did include the township/range on his pages and thus the locations are a little more certain.  The handwriting of both census takers was generally legible although sometimes certain letters were hard to decipher.  Some of the letters that were hard to distinguish were:  J and I;  a and o;  e and i;  m, n, r, and u.  Questions in the transcription are noted with an underline.  Each census page covers two page numbers in the census book (even number on the left side, odd number on the right).  There were some 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.  For some reason, both census takers only totalled the first two male and female columns at the bottom of each page.

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.