Description
This map shows the illiteracy rate in 1870 in the eastern half of the United States and in California (in a box at bottom right). In a broad swath of Southside Virginia, more than 60 percent of the population could not read or write. The percentages shown here came from data compiled for the Ninth Census under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior. This map was published in volume 1 of the Ninth Census, The Statistics of the Population of the United States, Embracing the Tables of Race, Nationality, Sex, Selected Ages, and Occupations (1872).
