posted by Amy Hillier

on May 19, 2006

Thank you to whomever suggested a blog (I can't remember now, but thanks to Tim for the encouragement this week). We've been working on this research project for more than a year now, but last week marked the beginning of summer which means a lot more people are available to work on this. Our main goal this summer is to finish collecting data from the 1900 U.S. Census for all 4,000 households within the 7th Ward that DuBois studied (in downtown Philadelphia, bounded by the Schuylkill River on west, 7th Street on east, Spruce Street to the north and South Street to the south). Yes, that's really tedious work but it's fun to see patterns start to emerge, like a clustering of Irish around 18th Street and a clustering of Russians and Eastern European immigrants around 7th Street. We've also had fun looking up some of the occupations. Who knew what a hod carrier or huckster were? Thank to Wikipedia, I now know. I think I'll keep the job I have.

hod is a tool used to carry bricks and mortar. It is a wooden box with a pole affixed underneath the box. A hod carrier is someone that has the job of climbing the scaffolding at a worksite and carrying the load in the hod to the masons.

A huckster is a seller of small articles, usually of cheap or shoddy quality, or one engaged in haggling or making petty bargains, that is, a certain type of peddler or hawker.