In 1869, during the enlightened presidency of D. F. Sarmiento, the first Argentine national census was undertaken during the days 15th to 17th September. We can still consult the original census records deposited in the Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires.

We are indebted to Luis Sebastian Stuart Pennington for transcribing the names of the British and North American residents then listed as living in the Barracas area of Buenos Aires.

The following four webpages contain the names and details, as given in the census record, of these residents and their family members. This is a valuable additional source for family historians searching for those forebears living in Buenos Aires in 1869.

There are, however, limitations to the transcription. These have been caused by the inevitable distortions made in the process of recording the names. It was probable that the officials going from house, noting the details of each household, were not familiar with British names, with the result that what they wrote down was a phonetic version of what they heard. An obvious example is Witequer (tomo 41), which we would now read as Whitaker or one of its variants.

However, the reading back into the record is not at all easy. What are we to make of Bleke, Momuy and Err, all taken from tomo 36? Some officials were more careful in the way they noted the names, others seemed to have been more careless.

It has been possible from other contemporary sources to confirm and correct some of the names logged in the census. In this transcription, these appear in heavy type, and the source used to confirm the record noted in an additional column.

So far the following sources have been used:
St John's Anglican Church, Buenos Aires: baptism, marriage and burial records;
St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Buenos Aires, baptism, marriage and burial records;
Mulhall's Handbook, 1863: List of Foreigners living in Buenos Aires;
List of names of the victims of the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1871;
Coghlan, Eduardo A., "El aporte de los Irlandeses ...", Table III, Buenos Aires 1982.

We are welcome further suggested identifications of people who feature here, and will alter this record accordingly.