The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 62, July 1958 - April, 1959 Page: 7

The Texan of 186o

its report on occupations into 187 classes. Only 265 men were
classed as planters, but their plantations required 1,254 overseers.
There were 51,469 farmers and 6,537 farm laborers. Teachers and
music teachers to the number of 1,552 belonged to what the 1850
Census had described as "pursuits requiring education." The fine
arts were represented with three actors, six dancing masters, forty-
five artists, and eight architects. All of the usual occupations were
listed along with four toymen and four catchers of wild horses.
While no figures were given for domestic service in 1850, a decade
later 3,541 servants were listed.18
It should be interesting to compare size of families in 1960 as
against those of 1860-perhaps the sizes may be somewhat similar.
In 186o there were 14,359 babies under one year of age. Popula-
tion was growing, but death certainly came earlier than in this
generation, filled with discussions of geriatrics. Barnes Lathrop, in
his study of Migration into East Texas, 835-z860, comments on
the near worthlessness of the mortality schedules of 1860 as a basis
for vital statistics. It may be a reflection on scarcity of doctors
(1,471 physicians and five surgeons were enumerated) and the
general state of medical knowledge as well as the frontier environ-
ment that "unknown" disease was responsible for 1,212 of a total
of 9,377 deaths. Violent death brought an end to 680, of whom
29 were suicides and 121 were the victims of murder or homicide.
The chief cause of accidental death was burns or scalds. Next to
mysterious "unknown," pneumonia was the grim reaper for 964;
typhoid fever took 702, and yellow fever claimed 430. Infantile
illnesses were listed for 115, and teething was given as the cause
of death of 199. Texas might be hell on women and horses, but
the female of the species was hardier than the male, with a death
total of 4,265 against 5,122 for the men. Of course there were more
men than women. Ten deaths were attributed to insanity. The
population schedule listed a total of 125 insane and 201 idiots.
Sixty of the insane were recent residents of the State Hospital in
Austin, established in 1860. Other eleemosynary institutions were
the School for the Deaf with its 27 pupils out of a total of 121 deaf
persons and the School for the Blind with 12 pupils out of the
1sDe Bow, Compendium of the Seventh Census, 128; U. S. Census, z86o, I, 490-491.