An 1820 census with only slaves in the household? (free, accurate, history)

[Alandros]

I'm curious if someone knows what it means when in an 1820 census household there are only slaves...

http://us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/ce...istrict-3a.txt

Jackson Jackson

Looking on ancestry's image of the census it looks to be an accurate transcription? Is that just a household of slaves owned by someone else? Maybe it was reported or recorded wrong?

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by Alandros

Is that just a household of slaves owned by someone else? Maybe it was reported or recorded wrong?

It's definitely recorded wrong. It's impossible to say how though - either they were incorrectly marked as slaves when they were meant to be marked as free, or they were slaves in a separate household on their owner's property. If that was the case, they should have been tallied under their owner's household, not in their own household. So it's definitely a mistake either way.

[naadarien]

Well considering that some residences (in other census records) were recorded without parents when parents existed, were alive, and were enumerated in another residence, it is always possible that the slave owners weren't home.

The other possibility is the "home" was counted as a separate domicile when maybe it should not have been (slaves quarters on a plantation).

Maybe a well respected slave was given his own spot. Maybe a slave who looks too much like the slave owner was given a space of his own so the wife didn't have to see him every day.

LOL. Our country has all manner of craziness like that in the history books so my mind wanders when I come across one-offs like this.