For the last couple weeks I’ve been wading through New Hope census records conducting demographic research. Today I found this gem in the 1880 New Hope census:

It appears to be a boarding house on Main Street in New Hope with an interesting list of tenants.

  • Eliza Kitchen, 74, incapacitated by apoplexy and attended to by her unmarried 38-year-old daughter Mary Ann.
  • Ana Maria Peaker, 42, a black domestic servant with her five daughters. Her children have the surname Wood and her relationship status is not filled out. Are the illegitimate?
  • Charles B. Knowles, 76, a retired merchant boarding with his wife Margarett, 75, listed as insane due to “Softening of the Brain.”
  • Ruth Ann Parry, 85, a spinster.