I have decided that for my final I have chosen option two, picking specifically the data in the 1756 census of Albany. I decided to choose this data set because of its still early time in Albany’s history, but also because of interesting time, being before the American Revolution and during the French and Indian War. The census data is divided into 11 categories: Household Number, Name, Trade, Gender, Conv for Officers (number of officers that can be housed in the household), Officers Upon a Pinch (number of men in the household that can be made officers), Conv for Men, Men Upon a Pinch, Number of Fireplaces, Number of Rooms without a Fireplace, and Rooms the Family Occupied. The data presented in this census is both textual and numerical. The categories 2 through 4 are textual, providing a worded answer while categories 1 as well as 5 through 11 are numerical. The numbers in the data range from 1 to 326 in category one and from 0 to 10 in categories 5 through 11.
For my three relationships in the data that I am going to explore, I am going to look at:
1.The end of the data of certain households has an extra row that designates if the household was “good” or “rich”. I want to explore who these people are that have these special designations and if I can see a pattern of how or what makes these specific people rich enough to have such designations.
2.I want to explore the relationship between male and female heads of households and see the similarities and differences between them. Specifically what occupations female heads of households have and what effect a female run household may have on the number of officers and men their households are designated to hold.
3.A comparison of the various occupations of Albany households during this time. What were the most popular or common occupations of the time, as well as the most unusual occupations and see if I can find either a trend in family size, household size and/or wealth based upon a given occupation.
Good observations. One caveat about the 1756 census–it’s only large property owners who could house soldiers in extra rooms, so think of it as middle and upper middle class rather than the whole city.
For some of your questions, you may need to dig a bit in county histories–the university library has several histories of Albany county published in the 19th century, which discuss the pre-revolutionary period. Since the town is so small at that point, there’s several of your people mentioned by name and that could help give you context for some of your questions.