The number of Merrills in the United States is estimated to be:

Data sources:

1. Population of the United States by state and year: parep2.lbl.gov/pdocs/feas/pop/pop1790_1990/readme.txt.html, U.S. Bureau of the Census, webmaster@census.gov
2. Frequency of surnames in US in 1990:
   www.iarelative.com/1990cen.htm, U.S. Bureau of the Census, webmaster@census.gov
3. Relative frequency of surnames by state in 1850, 1880, 1920, and 1990:
   www.hamrick.com/names, Edward B. Hamrick, 71470.3236@compuserve.com
   
   Ref. 2 gives the total number of Merrills in the U.S. in 1990 as 0.013% x 250 million = 32,000.  Refs. 1 and 3 yield a 1990 estimate of about  210,000, about 7 times too large.  Ed Hamrick, the author of Ref. 3, was unaware of the discrepancy and is unable to explain it (2/3/98).  It is unknown whether the same error affects all four years.  Here we assume that the state frequencies in Ref. 3 all have the same error, and we apply a constant factor of 32,000/210,000  to give agreement with the 1990 U.S. Census.  For details of the calculation, see the spreadsheet below.

number of Merrills by state:

Deane Merrill, merrill@crocker.com