Historical

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A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787-1825 (Philip J. Lampi and American Antiquarian Society; Tufts University Digital Collection and Archives)
A New Nation Votes provides data from America’s earliest elections, between 1787 and 1825. The electoral data from the site covers offices from the United States president down to local offices such as alderman and county coroner. Fifteen thousand elections are available as of February 2008, about 27 percent of the eventual total that will cover all 25 states that existed during the time frame. The data is the result of decades of research using sources such as newspapers and county histories and primarily collected by researcher Philip J. Lampi. The site represents a collaboration between the American Antiquarian Society and Tufts University Digital Collection and Archives, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. A New Nation Votes is searchable by keyword, state, year, office, candidate, and party. Results are in HTML tables, with links to view PDFs of Lampi’s original notebook pages. The entire dataset or data by state may also be downloaded for analysis.

Canadian Century Research Infrastructure (Canadian Century Research Infrastructure)
The Canadian Century Research Infrastructure is a five year initiative to develop databases from Canadian manuscript census records from the period of 1911 to 1951. The resulting project will link this database to other databases that cover 1871 to 1901 and 1961 to 2001. The site currently provides a listing of variables for 1911 to 1951. In English and French.

Canadian Families Project (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada)
The Canadian Families Project is an interdisciplinary project studying Canadian Families, completed between 1996 and 2001, that created a 5% sample database from the 1901 Canadian census. Ordering information for the complete sample and users guide are available at the site; there is also an online version of the British Columbia portion of the sample. In English and French.

County Population Trend Reports (University of Missouri-St. Louis, Urban Information Center)
Provides ASCII tables of historical to 1995 population counts for all U.S. counties, including percent change (post-1990 data include a breakdown of change factors).

DataZone (Economic Policy Institute (EPI))
The DataZone provides access to tables of United States historical labor market and income data, mostly on the national level but some at state & regional levels, that can either be viewed in PDF or downloaded in Excel. Though last updated in 2006, the historical statistics go back into the 1970s and earlier. The larger EPI site is kept current with analysis and briefing papers.

Federal Reserve Board Historical Data H.15 Selected Interest Rates (U.S. Federal Reserve)
The H.15 release contains daily interest rates for selected U.S. Treasury and private money market and capital market instruments. It is published weekly.

Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED II) (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)
Over 1000 economic time series, going as far back as 1946 in some cases, and also quite current. FRED II, the second incarnation of the database, provides for online charts and downloads in both Excel and text format. (The original FRED database, discontinued in July 2003, carried only text files).

Historical Estimates of World Population (U.S. Bureau of the Census)
Text table comparing various cited sources of estimates from 10000 B.C. to 1950 A.D.

Historical Labor Statistics Project (HLSP) (Historical Labor Statistics Project)
Offers at least 36 downloadable, documented datasets on American labor markets selected from over 150 separate investigations undertaken between 1874 and 1920 by the Bureaus of Labor Statistics established by the governments of 29 states. See the Read Me First and List of Series for more information. Data are located on the server of Economic History Services.

Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition Online (UW-Madison subscription) (Cambridge University Press)
The historical counterpart to the annual Statistical Abstract of the United States has finally been updated and put online! The previous edition covered colonial times through 1970 and was issued by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in honor of the U.S. Bicentennial (DISC has the bicentennial edition on CD-ROM). The present edition, greatly expanded and updated, was undertaken by Cambridge University Press, resulting in a web edition as well as 5 volumes in print (print volumes available at several libraries on the UW-Madison campus, including the CDE print library). Major subject categories include: Population, Work and Welfare, Economic Structure and Performance, Economic Sectors, Governance and International Relations. The online version offers tables for download in XLS and CSV, along with a custom table feature for combining more than one table. The custom tables and some other site features require a free registration, in addition to the subscription provided by UW-Madison via IP-authentication.

Historical Voting Tables - Congressional Elections (U.S. Bureau of the Census)
These tables, ranging from 1966-1994, cover such topics as percent reported voting and registering in congressional election years, by race, Hispanic origin, gender, age and region of residence, as well as percent of persons 18 to 24 years old voting in congressional elections, by race and Hispanic origin.

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) (Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota)
The IPUMS project makes census microdata available for the U.S. (1850 to present) and for an increasing number of international censuses. For each arm of the project (U.S., international, and Current Population Survey), samples are combined into a unified database, with uniform codes and integrated documentation. Users can create and download extracts online. One major asset of the international arm of the project is the inventory of known censuses and surviving microdata. Free registration and agreement to conditions of use is required for download.

Measuring America: The Decennial Censuses from 1790 to 2000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census)
“Measuring America: The Decennial Censuses from 1790-2000” tracks the development of the census in the United States from 1790 to the present. The report shows the growth of the United States and the gradual changes in population demographics through questionnaires used in each census. Methodology for each census is also included. Note: DISC also has a print copy available in the library.

National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) (United States Department of Agriculture (USDA))

According to the NASS web site, the National Agricultural Statistics Service"conducts hundreds of surveys every year and prepares reports covering virtually every aspect of U.S. agriculture. Production and supplies of food and fiber, prices paid and received by farmers, farm labor and wages, farm finances, chemical use, and changes in the demographics of U.S. producers are only a few examples." Data is compiled at the national, state and county level. The highest-profile NASS survey is the Census of Agriculture, conducted every 5 years.

A Quick-Stats table generator allows online data queries; geo-spatial data, charts, maps and reports are also available.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) (National Archives and Records Administration)
NARA is an independent federal agency that oversees the management of all federal records, including electronic data. Of special interest from the data perspective are the Electronic and Special Media Records, with an introductory page at http://www.archives.gov/research/electronic-records/index.html.

Psephos – Adam Carr’s Election Archive (Adam Carr)
The Psephos site is dedicated to the posting of election results worldwide (174 countries as of 2006). Results are culled from sources such newspaper reports or government web sites, and reformatted as text documents. Coverage varies by country, but the Australian section is particularly strong, going back to 1901, and current coverage of small countries is impressive as well, with frequent updates across the site.

Statistical Accounts of Scotland (EDINA)
In celebration of its 5th anniversary, the EDINA National Datacentre has made available the Statistical Accounts of Scotland dataset. These data, collected by parish ministers in the 1790s and the 1830s, provide a rich record of topics such as: wealth, class and poverty; climate, agriculture, fishing and wildlife; population, schools, and the moral health of the people. A free login is required.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Database (Trans-Atlantic Slave Database)

The TransAtlantic Slave Database was initially published on CD-ROM in 1999, and is in the DISC collection. The project has since expanded, and is now online. The Voyages database on the site includes voyages spanning the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, some 35,000 in all. Users can construct queries, select variables to be displayed in tables and downloaded, and view summary statistics, maps, and timelines.

The site estimates that only four-fifths of slave voyages were actually documented, and provides an interactive page for further examining and fine-tuning estimates. The site also includes an African Names database of over 67,000 individuals aboard slave ships, a small portion of the over ten million Africans who were forcibly brought to the Americas but of great interest to genealogists.

U.S. Election Counts Since 1920 (Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives)
This site provides official state-by-state vote counts in federal elections from 1920 through 2004. All years are available as PDF documents, while 1992 onward are available in HTML tables as well.

United States Historical Census Data Browser (University of Virginia and Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR))
Data presented here describes the people and the economy of the U.S. for each state and county from 1790 to 1960 as provided by U.S. Census results.

Virginia Emigrants to Liberia Database (Marie Tyler-McGraw and Deborah Lee)

From 1820 to 1865, the state of Virginia sent more emigrants to the newly-created independent African republic of Liberia than any other U.S. state. A 2007 book by historian Marie Tyler-McGraw, recounting Virginia’s participation in the Liberian colonization movement, led to a collaboration in which two related databases were placed online under the auspices of the Virginia Center for Digital History: a database of 3,700 emigrants and one of 250 emancipators. Stories, timelines and other resources are included on the site as well.

The Emigrants Database includes variables for first and last names, gender, age at emigration, place of origin, emancipator, ship name, date of emigration, level of education, occupation, Liberian destination, and additional notes. The Emancipators Database includes first and last names, locale, occupation, year of emancipation, ship name, emancipated names, and notes. Both databases are searchable by selected fields. If all selections are set to “any,” all records are included in the resulting table. There does not appear to be a download option.

Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008 (Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond)

The Voting America site presents animated maps of presidential election data at the county level across time (actual returns, margin of victory, party strength, population, voter turnout).

The centerpiece of the animated "cinematic maps" is a timeline tour through presidential election data from 1840 onward. Cinematic maps for individual elections show a series of thematic maps, from state results to county results to numbers of votes to margins of victory. Another series of cinematic maps shows population growth over time for white and African American residents. Users can also choose "interactive maps" and pick their own years and indicators to display. An additional section of the site provides analysis and commentary in video form.

The underlying data for the Voting America site come from ICPSR study #8611 for the years 1840-1972, and from Polidata for 1976-2004.

Yahoo! Finance--Major U.S. Indices (Yahoo Finance)
This site covers major U.S. stock indices, including the Dow Jones, NYSE, Standard & Poors, NASDAQ, and others. Data is available in table and spreadsheet format, with some historical data back to the 1970s. A link in the lefthand sidebar also leads to a similar site covering world indices.

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