Dolly Parton Day: Could Your Ancestors Read and Write? Check the 1900 Census

Dolly honored her daddy through books. Your family’s literacy story may be hiding in plain sight.

September 25 is Dolly Parton Day. Say the date as 9/25 and you’ll hear the wink: it nods to 9 to 5, the 1980 movie that had us all cheering for Doralee and her office sisters. In 2026, California made it official when lawmakers passed Senate Bill 931, carried by Senators Shannon Grove and John Laird.

This year the day feels different. We lost Dolly on August 25, and I suspect plenty of you have spent the past month playing her records a little too loud.

So let’s honor her the way she’d probably like best. With a book in one hand and a census image in the other.

Click HERE or the image below to get my best-selling book Ancestor Sketch: How to Turn Years of Genealogy Research into a Captivating Family Story

Dolly Parton Day: A Library Built on a Father’s Story

Dolly launched the Imagination Library in 1995 in Sevier County, Tennessee, as a tribute to her father, Robert Lee Parton, who could not read. The idea was gloriously simple: mail a free book every month to a child from birth until age five. It grew from one Tennessee county into a program reaching millions of children across the United States and several other countries, including kids right here in California.

Think about that. A man who couldn’t read raised a daughter who became one of the great storytellers of her century. Then she turned his struggle into mailboxes full of books.

Here’s what gets my genealogy antennae twitching. Robert Lee Parton wasn’t unusual. Many of our ancestors couldn’t read or write, and a census taker often wrote it down.

Dolly Parton Day: Finding the Literacy Columns in the 1900 Census

Pull up any 1900 United States Federal Census image on Ancestry and slide your eyes toward the right side of the page. Under the Education heading you’ll find a column for months attended school, then “Can read,” then “Can write,” then “Can speak English.” These questions applied to people age 10 and older, and the enumerator marked a yes or a no.

Tiny answers. Easy to skip. Most of us do.

Now the fine print, honey. A “No” tells you what somebody told the enumerator in June 1900. It’s probably accurate, but the answer may have come from a spouse, a neighbor, or a teenager speaking for the whole household. Some folks likely overstated their skills out of pride. The instructions counted reading in any language, yet a German or Italian reader could still have been marked “No” by a hurried enumerator.

So treat each answer as evidence. Not gospel.

Dolly Parton Day: Compare Answers Across Generations

One entry is a data point. Line up a few and a story starts humming.

Check the parents first, then every child over ten. If the family appears in 1910, look again, since that census asked about reading and writing too. Did Dad answer “No” while every child says “Yes”? Did a daughter attend school six months in a year when the farm surely needed her hands? That was likely a deliberate choice. Maybe even a sacrifice.

And have you ever noticed a grandmother marked “Can read” but not “Can write”? That pattern shows up more often than you’d think, and it raises wonderful questions about how she learned.

Dolly Parton Day: A Hypothetical Family, Two Columns Apart

Here’s a hypothetical example to show how this works. Picture a farm family in rural Kentucky in the 1900 census. The father, 44, is marked “No” for both reading and writing. The mother, 39, can read but not write. Their daughter, 12, can do both and attended school six months that year.

Now sort what you know from what you wonder.

• Firm and sourced: According to the 1900 census, the father was reported unable to read or write, the mother able to read only, and the daughter able to do both, with six months of school.

• Still open: Did the mother teach her daughter at home before school? Did the father sign his marriage bond with an X? Did that girl grow up reading letters aloud to him? Those questions point you toward marriage records, deeds, and school records. Until you find answers, they stay labeled as questions.

That’s sound genealogical practice. It’s also a story Dolly would have recognized in her bones.

Dolly Parton Day: Turning Census Answers into a Family Story

Once your facts and open questions are sorted, write it up. My book Ancestor Sketch: How to Turn Years of Genealogy Research into a Captivating Family Story walks you through shaping research like this into a narrative your cousins will actually finish reading. For more Dolly-flavored inspiration, pour some sweet tea and read the companion piece, What Would Dolly Parton Do? 7 Genealogy Lessons from Her Life.

Dolly Parton Day: Start Your Own Little Imagination Library

Dolly saw a need in her home county and started mailing books. No committee. No fuss.

You can do your own version. Ask your local library about hosting a family literacy night where volunteers help patrons find the reading and writing columns for their own ancestors, then pair it with a children’s book drive. Pitch the same idea to your genealogical or historical society. Call it “Can Read, Can Write” and watch the sign-up sheet fill.

Online genealogy groups can join in too. Run a September 25 challenge where members post one ancestor’s literacy answers along with a proper source citation. And if an Imagination Library affiliate serves your area, ask whether it needs sponsors or volunteers. Dolly built the engine. Local folks keep it running.

Would she have gotten a kick out of genealogists trading census screenshots in her name? I’d bet my best rhinestones on it.

So here’s my Dolly Day dare: Before you turn in tonight, open one ancestor’s 1900 census image and check the literacy columns. A single “Yes” or “No” written 126 years ago might be the first line of your family’s best story.

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Author’s Note: I want to be transparent that this content – Dolly Parton Day: Could Your Ancestors Read and Write? Check the 1900 Census – was created in part with the help of an artificial intelligence (AI) language model – Claude Opus 5.5. The AI assisted in generating an early draft of the content, but every paragraph was subsequently reviewed, edited, and refined by me. The final content is the result of extensive human curation and creativity. I am proud to present this work and assure readers that while AI was a tool in the process, the story, style, and substance have been carefully shaped by the author.