Maybe Dead Men Can Vote Twice; They Can Also be Counted in Censuses

I am working with a group led by my former major professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg on what's called, in fifty-dollar language, a prosopography.  That simply means an attempt to identify and describe all the people in a certain place at a certain time.  The certain place in question here is Colonial Spanish Florida, and the time, or times, in question span from 1565 to 1763, and from 1784 to 1821, called, respectively, the First Spanish Period and the Second Spanish Period.

I am entering some of my data into a template.  These data will become part of this massive project, which will be an online database, searchable by anyone who is interested.

Now, let me say that I've seen people who were counted twice in censuses.  My great-great grandfather Charles Reed was counted twice in the 1860 U.S. Census, and my father was counted twice in the 1930 U.S. Census.  I've seen people whose names were mangled in the censuses.  I've seen male people identified as female people, with a female name substituted for the male name.  That happened to the famous Prohibition agent Eliot Ness, in the 1910 census in which he was identified as Ella, seven-year-old daughter of Peter Ness, when in fact he was, of course, Eliot, Peter's son.  Since the U.S. censuses are kept from public view for 72 years after they are taken, I'm sure Mr. Ness, who died in 1957, never knew of this goof. I've seen people given odd professions.  One man in the 1935 Florida census is identified by profession as a lobster!  The enumerator, of course, meant "lobsterman," but the form did not give him enough room to write the entire word.

However, I have never seen a dead person enumerated in a census post-mortem.  Until now.

I am working on entering some data from the 1793 census of St. Augustine, and there is an entry for a man whose name was Theophilus Hill.  What a great name!  The Spanish rendered it as Teofilo Hill.  When I came across this entry, my reaction was, "Theophilus Hill was alive in 1793?"  I had seen his death record, it is in his file in my file cabinet, along with over 1600 other residents of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period, on which I am still gathering names and data.  I remembered vaguely that he had died earlier.  I pulled his file, and there, in the back of the file, is his death record, taken from the St. Augustine parish death records, the original documents.  The information is on a form I have created just for this purpose.  And the date of death?  20 December 1790.

When the census had been taken, Theophilus Hill had been dead for around three years.

Is there a chance that there was another Theophilus Hill in St. Augustine?  No.  He and his wife Teresa Thomas had four daughters and a son named Juan (John), who died at age 9 in 1796.  There was no Theophilus Hill, Jr.  I have not found any other Hill family in St. Augustine.  The data in the 1793 census matches the information I have on the deceased Mr. Hill.  There is no notation in the census, as was customary, that someone else was informing for Mr. Hill on the census.  The 1793 census of St. Augustine is one of the few, if not the only, census on which we know, at least in a small percentage of the entries, who the informant was, prior to the 1940 U.S. Census.  When a householder was absent, the census-taker would obtain the necessary information from someone else, and would record the name, or at least the relationship to the householder, of the individual reporting for him.

I have no idea how a man who had been dead for around three years ended up enumerated in the 1793 St. Augustine census.  Was the grieving widow that much in denial?  Was there some reason someone wanted Mr. Hill recorded in the census -- as a memorial?  Was there another motive?  And since, obviously, Mr. Hill could not have responded to the census-taker himself, why did that official not record who was giving the information?

Or could the death record be in error?  I doubt that.  Theophilus Hill and his family were well known to St. Augustine's people.  One of his four daughters was married to one of the most prominent men in St. Augustine, don Francisco Xavier Sánchez.  Certainly the priest who conducted the burial, Father Thomas Hassett, knew Theophilus Hill, his wife, Teresa Thomas, and his four daughters.  After all, he was the priest who conducted the marriage between Theophilus Hill's daughter and don Francisco.  No, I think the death record is correct.

Which provides us with a dandy mystery.