Do you have ancestors that living NYC’s 17th Ward in Manhattan in 1855? Search through these census records to discover names and relationships of your ancestor’s family. Ward 17 included a high population of immigrants, particularly German and Irish.
Do you have ancestors that living NYC’s 17th Ward in Manhattan in 1855? Search through these census records to discover names and relationships of your ancestor’s family. Ward 17 included a high population of immigrants, particularly German and Irish.
These records include images of the 1855 New York census for New York City’s 17th Ward. While the amount of available information varies, you may be able to learn the following about your ancestor:
Full name
Birth year
Birth place
Age
Sex
Marital status
Relation to head of household
Race or color
Occupation
The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society (NYG&B) digitized the county originals of the 1855 New York State census enumeration for New York City's 17th Ward in Manhattan. These records have not been microfilmed or digitized elsewhere. The 1855 census records every name within enumerated households and provides the relationship to the head of household. Individual street addresses were not recorded, but each dwelling was assigned a unique number in order of visitation. A team of NYG&B volunteers transcribed all four books of the enumeration’s population pages, indexing the names of more than 60,000 individuals. However, researchers are advised that several pages in book one were damaged and only partially legible. Other census pages listing marriages and industries and businesses were not indexed. In this browsable version of the census, you can filter your results by book and page number. A searchable version of these records is located in the Useful Links & Resources section. There you can search by several fields, including name, birth year, and occupation.
Located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Ward 17 was a densely populated area that attracted vast numbers of immigrants of diverse ethnic backgrounds, but especially German and Irish. The street boundaries of the ward (using 2015 street names) were, roughly: On the north by East 14th Street, on the east by Avenue B and part of Clinton Street; on the south by Rivington Street; and on the west by Bowery and a small part of Fourth Avenue.
Garrity, James. “Library Acquires NYC Ward 17 of the 1855 State Census.” NYG&B Newsletter (now New York Researcher), Summer 2003.
Meyerink, Kory L. “Second Enumeration of the 1870 New York City Census, Ward 17 Street Index.” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 115, no. 4 (1984): pp. 199–202. This article provides a street index to the federal census of Ward 17 made 15 years after the state census. Because the 1855 census did not record street addresses, knowing what street names fell within Ward 17 might prove helpful to researchers.