Living Merrills in the United States, 1850-1996
Deane Merrill, May 2007

This page was created in 1996.  Some of these links are no longer maintainted.  Contact Deane Merrill for current information.

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

We exclude variant spellings: e.g. Merrell, Morrell, etc.

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. United States population projections (for 1996):
   http://www.census.gov/population/projections/nation/npaltsrs.txt, U.S. Bureau of the Census, webmaster@census.gov
3. Frequency of surnames in US in 1990:
   www.iarelative.com/1990cen.htm, U.S. Bureau of the Census, webmaster@census.gov
4. Relative frequency of surnames by state in 1850, 1880, 1920, and 1990:
   www.hamrick.com/names, Edward B. Hamrick, 71470.3236@compuserve.com
5. Relative frequency of surnames by state in 1996: ProCD HomePhoneŽ, 1997 edition 1.

Merrills by state in 1990:

Ref. 3 gives the total number of Merrills in the U.S. in 1990 as 0.013% x 249 million = 32,000.  Refs. 1 and 4 yield a 1990 estimate of about  210,000, about 7 times too large.  Ed Hamrick, the author of Ref. 4, 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. 4 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.  The 1990 estimates from the Hamrick data are believed to be untrustworthy; we prefer the 1996 estimates from ProCD HomePhoneŽ, below..

Merrills by state in 1996:

Ref. 3 gives the total number of Merrills in the U.S. in 1990 as 0.013% x 249 million = 32,000.  Ref. 2 gives the estimated U.S. population in 1996 (265 million).  We estimate the number of Merrills in 1996 as 32,000*(265/249) = 36,000.  Ref. 5 gives the number of residential phone listings by state in 1996.  The proportions from Ref. 5 are used to estimate the number of Merrills by state in 1996.  For details of the calculation, see the spreadsheet below.

Related links by Deane Merrill:
    Deane Merrill's genealogy page
    Merrill/Merrell database, by Howard and Jean Merrill

updated 1/17/11
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http://merrill.olm.net/family/merrill/p1850-1990.html