Rastuses

[Joel S. Berson]

At 12/3/2007 05:58 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:
>Otherwise, I can speculate that Rastus may have become a more popular
>name during that time period, or census counts may have become more
>complete for
>the social or geographic groups that tended to include Rastus as a name.

I wonder if early US censuses counted blacks in the same proportion
as whites.  If I remember correctly, Massachusetts reported no slaves
in one of the earliest censuses, because it was not PC for it to have
slaves.  But that might affect only the totals that Bill reported
from the earlier years, not the ratios of white to black Rastuses in
1870 and 1900.

Joel

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