Where are They Coming From? Visualizing the Movement of People to Major Urban Centers in the Late 19th Century

The availability of complete count historical microdata has permitted the linking of individuals between censusyears for longitudinal analysis. These linked datasets provide important research opportunities regardinghistorical population mobility. In our previous work, we estimated migration distance for the linked peopleusing population weighted county centroids.A In this paper we visualize these linked migrants from theircentroid1of origin to major urban hubs in late 19th century United States. The linked samples provide a variablecalled MILEMIG, which is the number of miles travelled by each migrant; we visually represent MILEMIG withthe help of maps for this study. We also, with the help of these maps, analyze changes in the occupationalcharacter of the migrating individuals over time. Prior to presenting results, we describe our method ofmapping the migrants with the help of line maps commonly known as spider diagrams. Next, we track migrationpatterns to major urban and industrial hubs in the late 19th and early 20th century United States through timefrom 1870-1880, 1880-1900, and 1880-1910. Finally, we compare occupations of the linked individualsmigrating to the major urban and industrial hubs from one census year to another and associate the change inoccupational with their migration distances.