Sources
People: U.S. Census of 1850, Schedule 1, Free Inhabitants, Little Compton, Newport County, R.I., manuscript pages 6–41, taken by Otis Wilbor, assistant marshal. Transcription and coding by IPUMS USA, 1850 full-count data. Names are the IPUMS transcription and contain some errors. Relationships to the head are inferred by IPUMS; the 1850 census did not record them.
Base map: H. F. Walling, Map of Newport County, Rhode Island (1850), Library of Congress, Division of Maps.
How houses were placed
Wilbor numbered each dwelling as he reached it, so the dwelling number is a place in his walk round the town.
On the map (solid circles). 81 dwellings contain a farmer whose name is printed beside a house on Walling's map, and whose farm value in the agriculture schedule matches his real estate here. The poor house keeper's dwelling is placed at the map's "Asylum".
Estimated (dashed circles). Every other dwelling sits between the placed dwellings with the nearest numbers before and after it. Good estimates fall between placed neighbours no more than 6 dwellings apart and close together on the map; rough ones bridge a longer gap and are kept near the nearer neighbour. An estimated circle is a guess at the neighbourhood, never a house site. Click a circle to see which neighbours placed it.
A few dwellings sit in the same place; they are spread slightly so each can be clicked.
Reading the census
Occupations were recorded for males over 15 only. "None listed" heads are mostly women and older men. "Laborer" in 1850 often meant a farmer's son working the home farm. Real estate is what each person owned, wherever it lay; personal property was not recorded until 1860. The "attended school" column is marked for nearly every child aged 5 to 15, so it says little here.
Color was left blank for white people under the 1850 instructions. The words in the census notes view (Black, Mulatto, Pauper, Insane, Idiot, Deaf & Dumb) are the enumerator's terms, kept as written.