Publication year of the "Census directory for 1811" printed by Jane Aitken, the first published census to include African Americans.
On 1 January 1811, at the start of the year in which it appeared, Jane Aitken printed the Census directory for 1811 for Philadelphia, a work that has since been recognized as the first published census to include African Americans by listing names, addresses, and occupations of residents.[1][5]
The directory organized information about inhabitants and institutions, and significantly, it devoted space to “persons of colour,” recording free Black Philadelphians in a manner that anticipated later statistical and directory practices.[1][5] For a city with a substantial free African American population, this publication offered visibility and a form of civic acknowledgment at a moment when Black communities were often excluded from official records.
Aitken’s role as printer placed her at the centre of this pioneering effort in data collection and public information. While she did not author the directory, her willingness to undertake its production demonstrates her engagement with projects that extended beyond purely commercial or religious printing into the realm of social documentation. Historians now cite the Census directory for 1811 as a milestone in the representation of African Americans in print, and Aitken’s imprint connects the history of women in the book trades with early practices of census‑style record keeping and urban demography.[1][5]