FIRST CENSUS OF THE UNITED STATES

BENNINGTON COUNTY

POWNAL TOWN

The following is taken from "POWNAL - A Vermont Town's Two Hundred Years and More" by Joseph Parks and Published by The Pownal Bicentennial Committee 1977

"A very great amount of information about early Pownal can be gathered from the First United States census of 1790. It appears as a list of names and numbers, however, and doesn't say much unless it is interpreted. The following is what we understand from it:

A. Pownal grew considerably in the preceding 24 years, from 58 families when the first more-or-less reliable list was made in 1766, to 195 families (1734 people) in 1790. This was already about 64% of today's estimated population of 2700. In the average family at that time were about eight persons. Pownal was then the fifth largest town in Vermont.

B. The Tories of a decade earlier had not returned, with the exception of George Gardner, senior.

C. The Dutchmen were disappearing. In 1790 we can still find Bastion Deal, and his son Peter Deal. There is a Borns (Burns?) and a Voshbough (Vosburgh?) and some Youngs, but no more Kreigers, Van Amems or Hoglebooms. (It seems the Kreiger sons went to South Williamstown where they were millers.)

D. There may have been slaves in Pownal in 1790, despite the banning of slavery by the Vermont Constitution of 1777. The census shows a "free black female" in the home of Bastion Deal and two free black males in the home of Daniel Timothy. The word "free" need not be taken literally, as shown by a controversy in Bennington a few years later in which the Congregational minister was forced out for refusing to give up his slave.

E. No map or road designations accompany the family names. Historian William Browne says the order of the names follows the progress of the census-taker along the roads. That must be true, but it would take a substantial study of the deeds (a project Mr. Browne started but did not complete) to indicate more than the generality that the names close together in the list were probably neighbors. The list starts with Charles Wright, Solomon Wright and Thomas Jewett, from which we suppose that the census-taker began at Jewett's home near the Dugway, and then listed the two Wright's in the present village of Pownal.

F. By 1790 the well-known family names of recent times were pretty well represented. Perhaps not previously mentioned in this book were (as spelled in the census): Mash, Ladd, Niles, Browning (Brownell?), Eldrige, Moon, Lille, Westinghousen, Rusil, Blood, Lovit, Munson, Bushnalk, and Shermon.

G. Other well-known families previously mentioned in this book are also shown as present, but with different spellings than those the families used subsequently. Perhaps the census-taker was not careful in spelling names, but it is possible the families changed the spelling later. Such names are Towsloy, Prat, Morgin, Ovit and Carpender. We also note the spelling Myas and Myar, but we understand the Myers family spelled the name that way in earlier times.

We might note that the census figure ten years later, in 1880, shows the population count was down from 1734 to 1692, a decrease of about 2% from 1790 to 1800."

The 1790 Census of Pownal is a good starting point for a Pownal Genealogy project. We will need volunteers to take on responsibility for expanding our knowledge of the Pownal families as they existed in the Fall of 1791.

Census list description: