Leon Truesdell was a native of Rowe, Massachusetts, born on March 15, 1880, to parents Clarence and Lina V. Truesdell. He graduated from Leland and Gray Seminary in Townshend, Vermont, in 1903, and completed his bachelor's and master's of arts at Brown University in 1907. Truesdell obtained his Ph.D at the Robert Brookings Graduate School in 1928.[1]
After graduating from Brown University, Truesdell served as a high school principal in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, while working with Brown faculty member Walter Goodnow Everett as a research assistant. Truesdell was hired by the Bureau of Fisheries in 1911, and quickly joined the Bureau of the Census, where he remained until 1914. Truesdell returned to the Census Bureau in 1919, following five years as a field assistant with the Department of Agriculture. He was the assistant chief of the agriculture division until his appointment as chief of the population division in 1925, a position he retained until 1948. Truesdell became chief demographer thereafter, and retired in 1955, but served as a consultant to the Census Bureau until 1967.[1][2]
Truesdell was married to Constance Ethel Cole from 1916 to her death in 1957. The couple raised two daughters, Constance Emma and Miriam Helen. Truesdell died on January 12, 1979, at the Wisconsin Avenue Nursing Home in Washington, D.C.[1][2]
^Reviews of The Canadian Born in the United States include:
Kalijarvi, Thorsten V. (September 1943). "TRUESDELL, LEON E. The Canadian Born in the United States. Pp. xvii, 263. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943. $3.00". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 229 (1): 215–216. doi:10.1177/000271624322900172.
Berry, John W. (November 1943). "The Canadian Born in the United States. Leon E. Truesdell". American Journal of Sociology. 49 (3): 272. doi:10.1086/219391.
Caughey, John Walton (December 1943). "Review: The Canadian Born in the United States: An Analysis of the Statistics of the Canadian Element in the Population of the United States, 1850 to 1930, by Leon E. Truesdell and The American-Born in Canada: A Statistical Study, by R. H. Coats and M. C. MacLean". Pacific Historical Review. 12 (4): 427–428. doi:10.2307/3634094. JSTOR3634094.
Warner, Florence M. (December 1945). "The Canadian Born in the United States. Leon E. Truesdell". Social Service Review. 19 (4): 579–580. doi:10.1086/635609.
^Murphy, Larry J. (July 1969). "The Development of Punch Card Tabulation in the Bureau of the Census, 1890-1940 Leon D. [sic] Truesdell: Washington, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1965 pp.xii + 221 illustrations $1.75 (clothbound)". Technology and Culture. 10 (3): 455–457. doi:10.2307/3101703. hdl:2027/mdp.39015072113361. JSTOR3101703.