The 1856 census is the first Iowa state census to name every member of the household. It also states years resided in state (column 9). No line numbers appear on the original census and have been assigned to indicate the enumeration order. Odd numbered pages are extended farming statistics not transcribed. The enumerators usually left one or two blank lines between households

I have tried to transcribed exactly what the enumerators wrote, misspellings and all. Many times this was hard to decipher do to phonetic spelling and cursive hand writing. Occasionally I researched Federal Census enumerations to help determine names. This additional information will be found in the Transcriber's Remarks column. Variant name spellings, to aid the search engine, may also be found in the Remarks column.

My source for this transcription was online images. The source did not include all the Benton County pages, so this transcription is incomplete. If you have access to a different source for the 1856 Benton census, we certainly would appreciate your contribution!