The 1899 Puerto Rico census (Porto Rico was also used) was a national population census held in Puerto Rico and first under U.S. control by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. War Department.[2] It was the tenth census combined with the nine previous censuses taken by Spain.
The day used for the census was Friday November 10, 1899 with a total population counted as 953,243 - an increase of 154,678 or 16% over the previous 1887 census taken by the Spanish government.[3]
It was taken that to save time, the tabulation should be done by machine and not by the old hand-tally system. As the machines invented by Mr Herman Hollerith were successfully used in the earlier eleventh and were to be used for the twelfth U.S. census, it was adopted.[5]
The number of foreign-born returned by the census is 13,872 or about 1.5% of the total population. There were few regions in the western hemisphere in which the proportion of natives is so high and that of the foreign-born so low. Of the total number of foreigners 5,935 or 43 per cent were found in the three cities of San Juan, Ponce and Mayagüez.
Of the total foreign-born, 7,690 or 55% were born in Spain.[10]
With reference to race, the population of Porto Rico is divided by the census into two main classes - those who are and those who are not White.
The number belonging to each of these classes is as follows:[12]
The colored in the table includes very few (75) Chinese and many persons of mixed white and Black African blood as well as pure Black. Somewhat more than three-fifths of the population of Porto Rico are white and nearly two-fifths are partly or entirely negro or Black. By the 1899 census five-sixths (83.6 per cent) of the total colored were returned as of mixed blood.[13]
Gallery
Supervisors and enumerators of different departments.
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