A Tramp, A Fossil Dealer and the Vampires: The 1880 Wyoming Census
By Phil Roberts
In the 19th century, Wyoming was not the all-white land of the mythical cowboy of the Western movies. Wyoming had a substantial foreign-born population. In the first census (1870) after the territory was established, figures showed more than 40 percent of residents were born in a foreign country. In 1880 fewer people lived in Wyoming than now live in Laramie and the figure was 29.6 percent of Wyomingites born abroad.
Even by the year of statehood, 1890, 26 percent of the population was foreign born. It is little wonder that when the Wyoming Constitution was drafted in 1889, Article 6, Sec. 10, allowed non-citizen aliens to continue to vote in all elections, just as they had done in territorial years, for five years after ratification and statehood. (The provision still exists in the Constitution, but due to the year limitation, became a dead letter in 1895).
An analysis of the 1880 census shows not only the ethnic diversity of the population in the young territory, but the diversity of occupations among the 20,789 people counted in the population that April.
Cheyenne was the largest town in 1880 with 3,456.. Casper was not yet founded. The 42-year-old territorial governor J. W. Hoyt is listed along with his wife, young son and a 26-year-old “Black servant.” The territorial judge, William Peck, was boarding at the home of a butcher on 20th Street when the census taker made his rounds in 1880.
Oddly, the first people counted in the capital city were prisoners housed in the county jail. The motley group of 23 included a civil engineer, three cooks, two barbers, two prostitutes, and a “book agent.” There is no hint, of course, as to the reason for their temporary residence in the county facility.
The city jail population was just as diverse. A soapmaker, a hatter and two painters occupied cells there. So did a sailor. Unless he was operating a canoe on Crow Creek, he had not been employed in his occupation while a Cheyenne resident.
Laramie residents numbered 2,696 in the 1880 census. Included was an “owner of silver mine,” a number of teamsters, several saloonkeepers, railroad conductors, rolling mill employees, clerks and doctors. Lizzie Palmer was listed as “keeping a house of ill fame” on what is now First Street. She had three “employees.” A male “house plasterer” had quarters in the same house, according to the census record.
E. W. “Bill” Nye was listed as a 29-year-old attorney. (Editor of the Laramie Boomerang, he later became a well-known national columnist and lecture speaker). Another Laramie man, H. L. Halstead, 28, confidently listed his occupation as “gambler.”
The territorial penitentiary at that time was in Laramie and the prisoners listed on the 1880 census include a brewer, a blacksmith, two farmers, a postal clerk, a bank clerk and a hunter. The 56-year-old marshal in charge of the operation was suffering from “rheumatism” at the time of the enumerator’s visit.
Just as now, towns were anxious to count as many people as possible. The Laramie census taker even counted 31 members of a government pack train temporarily camped just outside town. At Rock Creek (later moved and renamed Rock River), Noel Cornfield, a 17-year-old Turkish-born “tramp” was counted with the more permanent population.
At least six people listed in the 1880 census had jobs relating to fossils. W. M. Reed and three associates were “collecting fossils” at Como Bluff and all four shared the same quarters in one of the three listed houses. In Green River, J. H. Johnson was a 47-year-old “dealer of fossils.” Lewis Lamouthe, a 50-year-old Canadian-born resident of what is now Sheridan and Johnson counties, was engaged in the “collection of specimens.”
Like the Cheyenne sailor, the “ship carpenter” listed at Fort McKinney (near present-day Buffalo) seemed to be out of his element. The four saloonkeepers in Buffalo (population 40) were probably much busier.
The Evanston population included a “saw filer” and a “wiper in a railroad shop.”
J. S. Thompson, a “visitor” at a home on lower Horse Creek in Laramie County, was by the census taker’s notation “a gentleman.” Cheyenne resident C. Boutier was a “capitalist” and an 83-year-old Lander man was a “plane maker.”
The Union Pacific Railroad towns enjoyed frequent visits from traveling thespians. A “show agent” counted in Evanston may have been booking a future performance by the Vampire family—Julian, Jen, Mary and Otto—who had been counted in the Cheyenne census as “traveling thespians.” (One can only guess the nature of the program presented by the performing Vampires.)
Seven pages of entries for Chinese coal miners were listed for Rock Springs. Also making up a sizeable portion of the town’s population were Finnish, Swedish, Welsh, and German coal miners.
Miner’s Delight, a boom town in present-day Fremont County, had Chinese residents, too. They were three men who were “gold miners.” South Pass City had been a boom town in 1870, but by 1880, only 37 people still lived there.
The population in what is now Park County was even smaller. “Stock herders” and a few teamsters were the only people listed there. Just one man is shown as a resident of the “Stinking Water District” which was along the Shoshone River near present-day Cody.
One-third of the people living along Owl Creek (Hot Springs County) were “druggists.” Living near the two men was an “ornamental plasterer.”
More common occupations were present at Runningwater (present-day Lusk). Most of the 31 people were cowboys, a couple were stage drivers and the rest were teamsters.
Few people in the entire state were listed as being “without occupation” although many people probably were missed. “Persons numbered 5-9 were hunting cattle on the range and could not be found,” noted a census entry for present-day Converse County.
Others were just barely counted. A 29-year-old man, on the Big Popo Agie River is what is now Fremont County, is listed with the notation “gunshot wound—must die from its effect.”
Boarded in the Carbon County Jail in Rawlins was James Averill. He died from the effects of a lynching when he and Ella Watson (“Cattle Kate”) were strung up on the Sweetwater River nine years after the census was taken.
There were coal miners at Almy and Carbon, railroad workers at Rawlins and Evanston, soldiers at Fort Laramie, Fort Steele, and Fort Washakie. Most women were listed as “keeping house” for their husbands, but one exception was Jennie Bennett, a Rawlins “news dealer.”
Wyoming Territory was barely a decade old when the census was taken in 1880. Diversity of ethnicty and regional migration are reflected in the listed birthplaces of the people. Except for local Indians, few could make the claim of four year-old Wyoming Smith of Powder River. Young Smith, and the Shoshone, Arapahoe and other Indian people living in the territory, were the exception. There weren’t many native-born Wyomingites in 1880.
A manuscript copy of the 1880 census is in the collections of Cultural Resources Division, Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources Department from which these entries were drawn..