The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
The claims · Howard's history and Polk's gazetteer, against the census
The claims: Timothy Howard's county history gives Osceola 177 people for 1900, and Polk's 1884–85 gazetteer gives the place "200 inhabitants." The record: the federal census's own places list gives the town 129 in 1880 — and returns no Osceola figure at all for 1900, the town being unincorporated and uncounted separately through those decades. The verdict: both numbers are the tellers' own, printed here in their custody and nowhere else in this build as counts. Howard's 177 is a historian's estimate wearing a census year's clothes; Polk's 200 is a gazetteer's round booster figure, the genre's standard inflation, printed whole in the Businesses leg's transcription where it belongs — as evidence of how the place was sold, not of how many lived in it. The Population leg owns the true series.
Sources
- This build's Population leg — the census series and the custody of Howard's figure (its AF-O5-5).
- This build's Businesses leg — the Polk 1884–85 entry transcribed whole.