Ancestry Magazine

In 1880, 5-year-old Eugene Hamp was in the Fulton County, Ohio, county home. He must have made quite an impression on the home’s administrators considering they wrote the following about him:

This boy is the child of Frank Hamp said to have been hung by a mob in the state of Missouri for horse stealing and was abandoned by his mother who is now leading a disreputable life. … This boy is the grandchild of the celebrated fat man John Templeton and also on his father’s side with Eli Hamp now in the Penitentiary of Ohio.

I wanted more information about Eugene. So I turned to a census non-population schedule known as the DDD.

Officially named the Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes census schedule, the DDD is an 1880-only tool containing information about citizens whose census records classified them as sick, disabled, insane, institutionalized, or indigent. You may learn the type of disease a person had, why he or she was imprisoned, whether a child was abandoned, and other details. My goal was to learn more about Eugene’s life in the county home.

Not every state had a DDD schedule; in fact, seven states have no known DDDs and only 15 states’ DDDs have been filmed by the National Archives . Others, including Ohio’s, are available in regional repositories. Check online or in William Dollarhide’s The Census Book: A Genealogist’s Guide to Federal Census Facts, Schedules, and Indexes to see if a DDD schedule exists for your research area.

Learn more about Jana’s search for Eugene’s story in the May/June issue of Ancestry Digital Magazine .