Over more than twenty-five years of research we have indexed the entire 1841 Tuscan census, sheet by sheet, thanks in part to a team effort. Today we are opening part of it to everyone: an interactive map showing where every surname lived in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. As far as we know, this is the first time the whole census can be explored in this way.

What is the 1841 census?

In 1841 the Grand Duchy counted its inhabitants house by house. For every household it recorded names, ages, marital status, relationship to the head of the family and occupation: over 1.3 million people in 236 communities, from Lunigiana to Tuscan Romagna, from Elba to Monte Amiata. Only the Duchy of Lucca and the territories of Massa and Carrara were left out.

It is a snapshot of Tuscany twenty years before Italian unification, and often the only record in which a whole family appears together, under the same roof.

How does the map work?

Just type a surname: Tuscany lights up in areas of about 15 kilometres, showing how many people and households bore it, where they were most numerous and where they were most frequent relative to the population.

The map also suggests similar spellings of the surname. This matters, because parish priests often wrote names down by ear: the census contains over 38,000 different spellings, and more than 15,000 of them appear only once.

A few curiosities

• The most common surname is Rossi: 10,912 people, concentrated above all in the Val di Chiana and around Arezzo.
• But if you add up all the forms linked to the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence (Innocenti, degl’Innocenti and their many variants) you reach almost 11,000 people, more than the Rossi. They were foundlings and their descendants, raised by wet nurses in the countryside, especially around Pistoia, in the Val di Sieve and in the Valdinievole.

What comes after the map?

The map shows the area, not the house. In our database every person is recorded with community, parish, house and household number: we can find your family and send you its census record, with members, ages, occupations, maiden names and a short commentary.

⇒ Try the map now
⇒ See our 1841 census service

As always, we are happy to answer any questions.