GEOGRAPHY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA 255 



CHURCHES 



Statistics of churches have been gathered by every United States 

 census from 1850 to 1890, and later by special inquiry between the 

 regular census periods, in 1906 and 1916. The information is ob- 

 tained not by asking each person what church he belongs to, if any 

 (which is done in some European countries, but would be repug- 

 nant to American ideas), but by correspondence with church of- 

 ficials. It is therefore hardly as accurate as most census data, but 

 it will suffice to show the prospective settler what to expect here 

 in that particular. 



A source of considerable uncertainty is that different churches 

 have different criteria of membership, some counting all baptized 

 persons, including infants, and some only those who have joined 

 the church voluntarily. (If the statistics were restricted to adults 

 we would have a fairer basis of comparison.) Another minor dif- 

 ficulty is that one comparatively new denomination (which has 

 quite a large following among persons of leisure, mostly in north- 

 ern cities) refused to give any information about its membership 

 for the enumeration of 19 16, according to the census volume. For 

 these reasons it is hardly worth while to estimate the ratio of 

 church members to total population, but in most parts of the 

 United States it amounts to less than half. 



The data for 19 16 (published early in 1920) only are used 

 here. It would have been more or less interesting to give some 

 1906 figures for comparison, but the differences probably would 

 not be pronounced enough to warrant the extra labor, and in 1906 

 the white and colored Baptists were not separated in the county' 

 tables. The leading denominations in each region have already 

 been indicated in the regional descriptions, but without giving per- 

 centages, on account of the uncertainties mentioned above and be- 

 low. For this reason the regions are not contrasted in the follow- 

 ing table, which gives statistics for the whole State, central Flor- 

 ida with and without Hillsborough County, and the city of Tampa 

 by itself, the last to illustrate conditions in a city with a large for- 

 eign-born population. 



