data tabulations, became part of the new Federal Government’s powers and duties.
The 1790 census, the first national enumeration of the United States, included the original 13 States as well as other areas that later would be formed into States. At that time, Virginia included what is now the State of West Virginia. The first national census reported separate counts for the districts of Kentucky, Maine, Vermont, and the area that is now Tennessee. The actual enumeration covered only the settled area, or about one-third of the new Nation’s land area. It excluded much of northern Maine, upstate New York, and western and central Pennsylvania. West of the Alleghenies, the 1790 enumeration covered only a few settlements in present-day Kentucky and Tennessee. It included only the eastern third of present-day Georgia, and none of Alabama and Mississippi. However, it did not encompass any of the Northwest Territory, because that area was not under the effective control of the U.S. Government or any of the States.
New States generally originated as part of the process of western expansion and settlement, with the exceptions of Maine (created from Massachusetts) and West Virginia (created from Virginia). Census coverage followed closely behind the addition of new territory; as the frontier moved west, successive decennial enumerations covered the newly settled areas.
Identifying the many boundary shifts and name changes of the territories is beyond the scope of this chapter, as is providing detailed comparisons between the areas enumerated for the first time and the areas of the present-day States. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to mention briefly some of these developments as they relate to the first coverage of areas in a decennial census of the United States. The maps in Figure 4-1 show the boundaries of the States and territories recognized for the 1790, 1850, and 1870 decennial censuses; the last major rearrangements of territorial boundaries and names occurred in the 1850s and 1860s. Table 4-1 shows the first decennial census that included the geographic area of each State, together with the date when each State was admitted to the Union. By the time of
