During Houston's first few years, it had many characteristics of a frontier town. Though this trend briefly reversed, the demographics of Houston's free population regressed toward those of a frontier town again during the 1850s. The imbalance in population favoring males increased, the median age was greater than the US at-large, and these males were less likely to be married. The number of young men quadrupled from 1850 to 1860, but the total population merely doubled during the same period. In 1850, Houston had 115 males for every hundred females, and this ratio increased to 136 per hundred by 1860. Saloons and gambling halls proliferated and were well attended, and violence was common. One in three Houstonians were born abroad, many coming from German-speaking countries. More than one of every five Houstonians during this period was an enslaved person. Though the percentage of bondsmen in Houston was comparable to those of other southern cities, there was a lower proportion of slaveowners. The practice of "hiring out" enslaved persons was common in Houston at the eve of the Civil War. Houston's total population grew to 4,428 by 1860, and its footprint expanded to the southwest by several blocks, reaching to a part of current-day Hadley Street. Urban bondsmen performed manual labor, such as construction, or moving freight at the wharf or to and from the warehouses; others worked as servants at private homes and hotels, or as cooks and waiters.