- Dates
- 1800 – 1990
- Eras
- Modern era
- Concepts
- demographyhistoriography
- Within
- Beaver Island
Summary
The Helen Collar Census Records are a surname-organized transcription series derived from federal census records, published by Clarke Historical Library as web pages and as a linked 2006 compiled PDF.
Evidence and limits
The collection supports locating an attributed census-card transcription and its stated date or household context. It is not a complete enumeration, a replacement for original schedules, or a population time series. The web series and compiled PDF represent the same Collar compilation and should not be counted as independent corroboration.
1880 St. James occupational snapshot
The compilation’s first page summarizes 30 households and 168 persons in St. James Township for 1880. Its listed occupations include ten coopers, seven fishermen, five retail grocers, and four sailors, along with smaller counts for trades, stores, service work, farming, lumbering, and a lighthouse keeper. This is useful context for the interdependence of fishing, cooperage, commerce, and maritime work, but it is neither an original federal schedule nor an island-wide or annual employment census. The page does not establish the identities, household assignments, exact work dates, or full occupations of individual islanders.
See also
Why this archive holds it but does not display it
The 2006 compiled PDF is held and quoted from here, and its pages are not published. It is Helen Collar’s work in the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University, and CMU’s pages carry a site-wide “© Copyright Central Michigan University” notice. The archive’s own record of the file is explicit that it is “not asserted to be public domain”.
It had nonetheless been published as 333 page images, because the rights classifier matched the words “public domain” inside that denial and read a negation as a grant. The classifier was corrected and the pages withdrawn on 8 August 2026. Nothing about Clarke’s position changed; what changed is that the archive stopped publishing on an accident of string matching. A reader who wants the compilation should use CMU’s own copy, which this article links.
Sources
- Described in this archive: Helen Collar Papers web transcriptions.The landing page states that the card series draws information from federal census records and links the complete compiled PDF.web · collar_census
- The held 333-page PDF is the published compilation linked by Clarke. It is a transcription/compilation, not the original federal census schedules, and it must not be treated as an independent second count alongside the web cards.local_documents · 2006_collar-beaver-island-census-compilation
- The compilation’s first page transcribes an 1880 St. James Township summary of 30 households and 168 persons and lists occupational counts including ten coopers, seven fishermen, five retail grocers, and four sailors. It is a compiled township-level transcription, not an original schedule, an island-wide total, a complete employment census, or evidence that every listed person worked throughout the year.local_documents · 2006_collar-beaver-island-census-compilation
Added 2 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Helen Collar Census Records transcriptions”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/documents/helen-collar-census-record-transcriptions/, accessed [date], citing Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University, “Census Records,” Helen Collar Papers, accessed August 2, 2026. (and 2 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-02. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
BibTeX for “Helen Collar Census Records transcriptions”RIS for “Helen Collar Census Records transcriptions”