Census schedules were compiled by enumerators and submitted to the Secretary of the Interior to determine and evaluate the utilization of farmland in Missouri. Each county return includes the names of the county and other legal subdivisions (e.g., cities, wards, towns, townships, precincts and districts). Entries for each farm concerning the activities of the previous year include name of individual occupying farm; tenure of individual (i.e., owner, rents for fixed sum, rents for shares of produce); numbers of acres of improved and unimproved land; valuations of farm, farm implements and machinery, livestock, orchard produce, nursery produce, market garden produce, forest products; estimated valuation of all farm productions; annual cost of building and repairing fences; amount paid for wages of labor and number of weeks labor hired for; numbers of horses, mules and asses, working oxen, milk cows, swine, poultry on hand; number of calves and lambs dropped; numbers of cattle purchased, sold living, slaughtered, killed by dogs, died of disease or stress of weather; amounts of milk, cheese and butter produced; number and weight of shorn fleeces; quantity of eggs produced; number of acres harvested and quantity of crops yielded for cereal (i.e., bushels of barley, buckwheat, Indian corn, oats, rye and wheat), pulse (i.e., bushels of flax seed, pounds of flax fiber, tons of flax straw and hemp), sugar (i.e., pounds of sorghum and maple sugar, gallons of sorghum and maple molasses), broomcorn (pounds), hops (pounds), potatoes (bushels), tobacco (pounds), orchards (i.e., number of trees and bushels of apples and peaches), nurseries, vineyards (i.e., pounds of grapes, gallons of wine). Also included are number of pounds of honey and wax gathered from bees and number of cords of wood cut from forests. Returns also include name and certification of census enumerator; date of census; location of post office; supervisor's district number and enumeration district number.
