1811 was the first main 19th century census conducted within Russian Empire. Only male residents were recorded. This is an attempt to make sense of this census.
In December 1811 there were 1,908 Jewish families recorded in Minsk census. This was the first main census conducted since the year 1795. For the purpose of this post the family indicates one or more individuals recorded separately. While most of the families seem to have originated in Minsk, in other families, at least one person, usually a father came from out of town. Such families thus considered newcomers. Based on somewhat scarce information, the year 1796 and 1806 saw the largest number of people settle in Minsk.
As elsewhere, Jewish population of Minsk was divided in three groups listed below.
Merchants
There were sixteen merchant Jewish families in Minsk in 1811. Only one of the fathers came from outside (Bobruysk). The rest are assumed to be local families.
Bourgeois
The largest group were bourgeois which consisted of 1,235 families with 494 unique last names. 154 of these families have originated from outside of Minsk, 50 from not recorded location while 104 families mostly came from Minsk district with towns Ostroshitski Gorodok (a.k.a. Gorodok Tyshkevich) and Komarovka leading the way with 11 and 9 names respectively. The second largest group of these newcomers seem to come from Borisov (8 names).
Artisans
There were 657 artisan families recorded, although in many cases, there was only one person recorded in the family. Additionally at least 60 artisns had no last names recorded, most of them died and the smaller number of them left prior to this census. There were 36 artisan newcomers, 30 of them came from unknown locality in 1806, while the rest mostly came from the local area.