Object: 1862 Photograph of President Abraham Lincoln and Superintendent Joseph Kennedy at Battle of Antietam

1860 Object: 1862 Photograph of President Abraham Lincoln and Superintendent Joseph Kennedy at Battle of Antietam The Superintendents/Directors of the Census have long been close advisors to the President for whom they work. Joseph C.G. Kennedy, Superintendent of the 1850 and 1860 Censuses, which provided economic and demographic information to the federal government in support of the Civil War, even accompanied President Abraham Lincoln to the Antietam battlefield. From 1790 through 1900, the temporary Census Office was disbanded after each census. It was not until 1902, that the Census Bureau became a permanent federal agency—first under the Department of the Interior, then the Department of Labor and Commerce, and finally, in 1913, under the Department of Commerce, where it remains to this day. The Secretary of State was the nominal director of the first five censuses, responsible for supervision and compilation of each U.S. Marshal's tabulation. This list includes several future presidents, such as Thomas Jefferson in 1790, John Quincy Adams in 1820, and, in 1830, Martin Van Buren (who was then President for the 1840 Census). In reality, these cabinet officers did very little actual directing and the marshals oversaw the actual enumeration process in their respective states, as directed by Congress. By 1840, the standardization of census questionnaires and the increasingly complicated process of conducting the census made it clear that more leadership at the federal level was necessary. Secretary of State John Forsythe appointed William Augustus Weaver as the first "Superintending Clerk of the Census" in that year. Weaver and his successors oversaw the technical aspects of the census, including the designing of questionnaires, and more closely managed the tabulation process. In 1870, the leader of the Census became the “Superintendent of the Census.” The first of these was Civil War veteran, Francis Amasa Walker, who led the 1870 and 1880 Censuses, during which he oversaw the change from straight tally to statistical analysis and a rapid increase in the data collected. He was followed by Charles W. Seaton, who invented a mechanical tabulating machine used to process the 1870 and 1880 Censuses. He took over the processing of the 1880 data, after Walker left to become the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was followed several noted scholars in statistics and economics who used the census to advance the areas of statistics, data visualization and data processing. Census leaders also influenced the way Americans saw themselves and their country, such as when Robert Percival Porter, Superintendent of the 1890 Census, declared an end to the American frontier, pointing out that there was no longer a discernable “frontier line” between high and low population density areas of the country. Since the creation of a permanent Census Bureau in 1902, the politically-appointed Director has often been a career statistician, such as Edward Dana Durand, Director from 1909 to 1913. An economist with a PhD from Cornell, Durand introduced the publication of state-level reports and the early release in press releases of statistics for which there was the greatest demand (such as the total population of individual cities, states, and the United States population). These releases were be followed by bulletins, abstracts, and final reports with greater detail. William Lane Austin, the director from 1933 to 1941, worked his way up to the top by starting as a clerk in 1900. Austin also presided over the introduction of statistical sampling in 1940, which increased data and data quality while saving costs. Vincent P. Barabba, director from 1973 to 1976 and 1979 to 1981, was the first and, to date, only director since the Census Bureau became a permanent agency to be appointed by two different Presidents, from two different political parties. The first woman to be director of the Census Bureau, Barbara E. Bryant, received her appointment in 1989, and was followed by Martha Farnsworth Riche, who served from 1994 to 1998. The current Director, Steven Dillingham, accrued more than 25 years of statistical, research, senior management, and legal experience in the federal government before joining the Census Bureau in 2019. He continues the proud tradition of leading the nation’s premier statistical agency. Final Population Count: 31,443,321 .

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