The Census Bureau asked for three different kinds of location information on the schedules they collected from religious bodies, and it kept track of a fourth.

The first is the state and county of each congregation, contained in schedule fields (e) and (f). As a part of our cataloging of schedules, this information has been recorded in the American Religious Ecologies database, and you can use this page to find schedules from every denomination in a particular location.

The Census Bureau also kept track of the name of the “city, town, village, or township” in field (d). This information contains the name of the populated place nearest to the congregation. The Census Bureau also asked for the mailing address of the person who filled out the form in the lower right. Sometimes, but not always, this contains the street address of the congregation’s meeting place. Finally, the Census Bureau classified a congregation as urban if it was located in a place with a population of at least 2,500, and otherwise as rural. This information was added by the tabulators, usually with a red “R” or “U” in the left margin near the name of the place.