Young Township Census Showing Presence of Boarders

This portion of one page of the 1910 United States Census for Young Township, Indiana County, Pennsylvania, shows a number of men who were identified as boarders. They were usually single or married men who immigrated without their families. Some of the married men were able to save enough money from their salaries as coal miners to pay the transportation costs necessary to bring their families, by boat, from Europe. A number of immigrants eventually returned to their homes in Europe for a variety of reasons. By 1920 there were 13,821 foreign born residents in Indiana County. A large number were from southern or eastern Europe. Most of these were either of Roman or Orthodox Catholic affiliation.  

Residents remember their families and neighbors housing boarders and the additional work that it entailed for the housewives. Sometimes a family took in several boarders who slept in rotating shifts in the same bed. It was not uncommon for families to take in boarders of nationalities other than their own. The additional income from boarders helped supplement the low salary of the head of the household, the coal miner. 


U.S. Bureau of the Census, 13th, 1910 Population Statistics: Pennsylvania, Indiana County
(Washington: National Archives Microfilm Publications). 

Clarence D. Stephenson, Indiana County, 175th Anniversary History,  vol. 2  
(Indiana, Pennsylvania: Halldin Publishing, Company, 1989), 509, 353.