06/22/2026
HistoryForge: Stories from the 1910 Census – Post 1
Today we are starting a new series of posts that will highlight our ongoing online project: HistoryForge. We’ll call this series “Stories From the 1910 Census” and it will be about some of the interesting people and places we’ve come across while transcribing the data from the 1910 census into the HistoryForge site.
HistoryForge combines historic maps and photos with census records of the people who lived in the city and county of Cortland, New York, creating a unique way to visualize the history of the community in the early 1900’s. At this point in time, the entire 1910 census has been transcribed to the site, and the 1920 census is in progress. We are also slowly adding photos, news items and other records pertinent to the places mapped on the site, making it an even more robust view of the community’s past. But beyond the data, beyond the information that can be gleaned from the website, HistoryForge is also a useful tool to help us acknowledge and reflect on “CHANGE”. Change is one of the few constants that affect every community, large or small, diverse or not. Change can be positive or negative, usually both at different points in time and how people feel about change over the long term will depend on how people react or respond to it along the way.
So, if we want to examine how change has happened in the Cortland community over time, a great place to start is with the 1910 census, a census taken in the middle of a rapidly changing United States. The few years before and after 1910 were a pivotal time in U.S. history, kicking off a transformative decade that included progressive social and governmental reforms, a transportation revolution in the form of the automobile and rapid industrialization throughout the country. In every area of their lives, socially, politically, economically, Americans were being significantly affected by the rapid pace of change. And the 1910 census was already recording some of the changes happening, even in smaller cities, like Cortland, away from the large populations in the big cities. For instance, people were on the move. People in this country were moving from the south to the north looking for a better life. And more important for Cortland, people were moving from European countries to the U.S. According to Ancestry.com, more than 15 million immigrants came to this country in the years between 1900 and 1915, with immigration peaking at 1.2 million arrivals in 1907 alone. Most of these people came from Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe. Many were Italians, heading to big cities with neighborhoods full of compatriots. But many also traveled further afield, looking for jobs and opportunities, to places like Cortland.
In 1892, the state census recorded four Italians living in Cortland. Thirteen years later in 1905, there were nearly two hundred. But by 1910, just five years later, that number had more than doubled to four hundred and ninety-six. The St. Anthony’s Day Parade began in Cortland in 1905 and by 1910 was already a tradition with one hundred adults and forty children participating. Many of the Italians showing up on the 1910 census were men who had recently arrived in the country and were boarding in overpacked houses in Wards 5 and 6. Many were single, though some were married with wives and family back in Italy. Some intended to earn money and go back to Italy and others hoped to bring their families here. The majority worked in the factories, springing up like mushrooms, across those two wards.
On the census, too, were those Italians who had already been in the city for a few years. They had their family already here and some of their children were Americans, born in this country, or even right here in Cortland. Though some were struggling still in this new life, many were already well on their way to their own “American Dream”. The 1910 census can’t quite capture those distinctions, but future census records and more will show that these Italian men and women and their children become sponsors, mentors and leaders within the Italian community and Cortland as a whole. Through activities involving church, social clubs, music, and sports and by becoming teachers and business leaders, they wove strong threads into the fabric of Cortland until this day.
In our next post, we will look more closely at one such Italian family in the 1910 census: the Fabrizios.
~ Taryn, CCHS Volunteer and HistoryForge Transcriber
