Puerto Rico's Padrones, 1779-1802 (ICPSR 30262)
Version Date: Apr 7, 2011 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Francisco A. Scarano, University of Wisconsin-Madison;
Katherine J. Curtis, University of Wisconsin-Madison
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR30262.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
The series consists of 23 annual censuses spanning the years 1779 to 1802, a collection that for its scope and continuity is unique among serial sources of Spanish American colonial history. The padrones were born of a 1776 Royal Order requesting viceroys and executives of Capitanías Generales and Gobernaciones, such as Puerto Rico, to prepare reports on population, broken down by social status, race, and sex. The focus was the civilian population and, therefore, excludes the regular army troops. The series reports the population of Whites, Indians, free Mulattoes, free Blacks, Mulatto slaves and Black slaves for each of 30 partidos in all 23 years (producing a total of 690 observations). Each socio-racial group was subdivided by sex and an ambiguous "age" criterion, which we have interpreted as the difference between dependent (or minor) status and mayoría de edad (adulthood or full age, which in the Spanish American context was 25 years of age). For each group, there are four subdivisions: adult males, adult females, young males, and young females.
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Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
Partido (county-like aggregate)
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Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
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2026-06-04 - This record has been revised to remove or replace language that may be outdated, harmful, or offensive. Updated terminology reflects current descriptive standards. Historical terms may remain in titles, source-supplied metadata, or study materials.
Universe View help for Universe
The 30 partidos comprising the island of Puerto Rico between 1779 and 1802.
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HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2011-04-07
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2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
- Scarano, Francisco A., and Katherine J. Curtis. Puerto Rico's Padrones, 1779-1802. ICPSR30262-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2011-04-07. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR30262.v1
2011-04-07 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Performed consistency checks.
- Created variable labels and/or value labels.
- Standardized missing values.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
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