Anbinder, O Grada, Wegge, Household Database.xlsb

For almost every question one might want to ask concerning the Emigrant Savings Bank depositors, the place to begin to seek answers is our Depositor Database. The information in it concerning the depositors’ birthplaces, occupations, places of residence, etc., has gone through several more years of additions, fact checking, and editing than the information in this “Household Database.” The Household Database, therefore, has only two real uses. First, it allows researchers to better understand how we arrived at the "peak household savings" figures listed in the Depositor Database. As we describe in the notes to that database, the peak savings amount we list for each depositor is not the savings of that person alone, but of all the people in his or her household. So, if Patrick Kelly had an account with $100 in it on January 1, 1855, and his wife Bridget had her own account with the same balance on the same date, and that total of $200 is the most they had in their accounts on any one day that their accounts were open, then we list each of them in the Depositor Database as having a peak household savings of $200. In some cases, adult children who lived with their parents had their own accounts and their savings was counted as part of the family’s household savings too so long as we believed that they were still living with their parents when the peak household balance was achieved. The Household Database lists which accounts were used to determine Patrick and Bridget Kelly’s household savings and who the other members of his household were who owned Emigrant Savings Bank accounts.