DESCENDANTS OF MONROE COUNTY ANCESTORS WHO LIVE OUTSIDE THE COUNTY NOW OUTNUMBER THOSE LIVING INSIDE THE COUNTY BY OVER 5 TO 1

 

There is considerable information available to let us understand the population of Monroe County, Ohio over the past two-hundred year.  We have the results of censuses that were taken beginning in 1820 through the year 2000.  We have 41 years of records from the Monroe County Probate Court for the period 1867 through 1908 that recorded every birth and death in the County.  From these we can calculate the birth and death rates for this period.  Let’s look at what we might be able to do with this information.

 

As an aid to understanding what we can do with this information, let us first take a look at a riddle.  The riddle is as follows: 

 

There was a small village in which exactly 100 people lived at the beginning of the year of our riddle.  During the year two of the residents died, 4 children were born and a family-of-4 moved into the village from Germany.  Yet, at the end of the year the village still had 100 residents.  How could this be?  The answer, of course, is that 6 people moved out of the village.

 

This same method that we use to solve the riddle can be used to explore a county such as Monroe County, Ohio if we have the necessary information available to us.  We do have sufficient information available to us to do this analysis.  Instead of considering just one year, though, we can look at 200 years – the full life-span of the County since it was settled.  A couple minor estimates need to be made such as the population of the County in 1800 and 1810.  But, this is easy since we have data from each of the other census years and we can easily establish the population trend and thereby estimate these first two decades.  Also, we do not have birth and death data for part of the 200-year period, but since we have reliable information for 41 years, we can calculate the birth and death rates of the County with good accuracy.  If we assume that the birth and death rates remained about the same throughout the full 200-year period, we can extrapolate for the other years with good accuracy.

 

If we do these calculations for Monroe County, Ohio, we find the following interesting facts:

 

1.                 Over the past 200 years, there have been over 116,000 people who have resided in Monroe County. This includes immigrants as well as people born in MC. 

2.                 Of these 116,000 residents, 58,000 to 60,000 have died and are buried in Monroe County. 

3.                 About 38,000 to 40,000, moved out of the County.  Most of these left the County over the past 150 years.  Most were the off-spring of residents who were in search of land of their own and jobs to support young families.  

4.                 Around 15,000 people continue to live in Monroe County, Ohio as of the year 2004.

5.                 The descendants of residents who emigrated from Monroe County now number about 80,000 living descendants of Monroe County ancestors.  Thus, living descendants of Monroe County ancestors living outside Monroe County, Ohio, now outnumber the descendants of Monroe County ancestors who still live in Monroe County by over 5 to 1.  Considering that the average age of the current 15,000 residents of Monroe County is considerably higher than descendants living outside the County, this ratio is likely to increase at a rapid rate.

 

The details for these calculations are given in the table below:

 

 

   MONROE COUNTY, OHIO POPULATION DATA 1800 – 2000

 

 

 

*  Estimated

¹  Monroe County, Ohio census except as noted

²  Monroe County births calculated using U.S. National birth rates for census years.  Click here to access U.S. National birth rate data.

³  Monroe County deaths using average death rate for 1867 – 1908.

⁴  Immigrants calculated as difference between previous census plus births minus deaths.  These numbers are probably too low by as much as 20% because they do not include immigrants who took the place of residents who left the County in the same period.

⁵ The rapid drop in immigration in the decade of the 1860s was likely due to the Civil War in America.

⁶ The spike of population in the decade of the 1900s was due to an influx of population brought into the County by the oil boom.

 

The decades of the 1840s and 1850s saw the peak of immigration into Monroe County, Ohio.  Many of the immigrants came from Europe, however, many came from the eastern states of America.  

 

Provided by Dick Harrington