The Census
What is the Census?
The Census is a head count taken every ten years. The census was instigated in 1801 initially to work out the population numbers, which was linked to the Napoleonic Wars. this was done in case of an invasion, as the Crown could then work out how many people it could mobilize. But after the 1840s it became more than that. It became a statistical exercise working on occupation, age, and movement; so you could start planning government policy about administration.
How do I use the Census?
The Census can be quite tricky to use until you've worked out what it actually tells you. It's a head count and it's a snapshot, it's based on property, so you need to know where your ancestor was living and roughly what age they would have been in one of these given years. The other thing is that it's only available up to 1901, because the data it contains is very confidential. It involves a lot of information about private individuals, and so they are closed for one hundred years to make sure that most people who would have been taken in the last Census are no longer alive. To go about using the Census you need to have found someone who was alive in 1901, know a little about them and where they were living, and then start searching either the online records or at the Family Record Center.
Where do I get a copy of the sentence from?
These days, the census is readily available online, and there are various commercial companies that provide access. Most of the English and Welsh censuses are on Ancestry.co.uk. Other websites, such as FindMyPast, Origins, or 1901 Census, will also give you access to, if not the complete census collection from 1841 to 1901, then parts of it. If you're looking for Scottish census records, you can go to Scotland's People. That would be the best place to start looking for census returns, because with a small fee to actually download the images, it's much quicker than going in person to one of the main institutions such as the Family Records Center or a county archive, where the records are on microfilm and usually not that well indexed.
Does the Census hold information across the whole of the UK?
The Census covers all parts of the UK as it stands today. The Scottish returns are held in Scotland but also available on Scotland's people. England and Wales are lumped together. You can also find information about the Channel Islands and the Isle of Mann. The only part that is excluded is Ireland. The returns for 1901 and 1911 are available but all earlier returns have been destroyed. And anything after that date are not available for public release.
What dates does the Census cover?
What dates does the Census cover?
How will the Census help me?
The census will allow you to join some of the dots that you have already found while looking at birth, marriage, and death certificates, but also to understand more about the family that you traced. Not just in your direct line back, but their siblings, what they were doing, their jobs and occupations, and even down to what sort of household community they were living in. The census really gives you a window into the past during the nineteenth century, and is an invaluable source for family historians.
How do I search for my ancestors?
First of all, in order to search for your ancestors, you need to compile your family tree as far back as 1901 or, indeed, even further, if you can do that, by ordering birth, marriage, and death certificates proving a link between one generation and the next. Once you've hit the 1901 boundary, you can then start to look for these people in the 1901 census, and then work back every ten or twenty years. Without that core information in 1901, you don't know for certain whether the people you've found in the census returns are actually related to you.
How are search results displayed?
When you go to a website such as Ancestry that allows you to search sets as returns, there are two sets of data displayed. The first, once you've filled in the search screens and you've found a match, gives you a basic transcription or a modern recording of the actual record itself. And then you've got the option to click on an image and see the original return. You've got a transcript which is nice and clear and easy to read, as well as an image of that original document created in the late 19th, early 20th century.
Why do I see duplicate listings of the same ancestor?
You see duplicate listings of the same ancestor because the census was taken over a number of nights, or formerly returned and then handed to the numerators, sometimes a family might have filled in a form at their home address, yet then moved to another part of the country, or stayed with friends and relatives and been recorded twice, so what you see duplicate entries, it's not that you got dopplegangers, or twins, or different sets of people, it's just that people moved around perhaps caught twice during that one particular census return.
How do I narrow my search?
When you start searching a census return and you've got a fairly common ancestral name, John Smith, for example, you are going to get thousands upon thousands of results. You need to start focusing on some key things. Firstly, age. Secondly, other biographical information about that individual. Were they married? Did they have children? Thirdly, where were they living? That will help to cut out quite a lot of these other entries. Fourthly, from a certificate, perhaps, you may have worked out what their occupation might have been. Occupation does change quite a lot, but these four key things will allow you to hone in and perhaps get your sample down to two or three possible examples. That way, you can then start looking at the other sources to work out which is the right one.
How do I search for children of the same parents?
When you find a census return, you'll find the head of household and usually a wife listed along side them and then you'll have a list of all the children that they've had. So, obviously, if you go from census return to census return you've got a ten year gap, so you should see those children aging ten years each time. Sometimes they don't quite match, you usually get one year out, but it's pretty good and once you've done that, you can find out the birth certificate for those children by going back into the civil registration indexes and ordering them up. A lot of people start to come forward in time, trying to work out the descendants of those siblings of the direct ancestor, and that's how people expand their modern family tree.
What is a submission number and how is it useful?
On a lot of websites you will find submission numbers or files, which have been uploaded by individuals. These relate to pedigrees or family trees that other users, or other researchers have actually contributed to. One of the main resources is familysearch.org and they collect a lot of these ancestors files or pedigrees, and so whenever they collect a new piece of data, a submission number is then added to it so that you can track back to find out when it was submitted and the person that submitted it.
Why can't I find myself?
A lot of people think that they can just go online, type in their name and the family tree will fall out. It doesn't work that way. You may well find people who have linked you into their family tree. Genes Reunited, for example, is a very good case in point. But a lot of these links are artificial. Or you'll find just random directory searches bringing up lots of names, which may or may not be related to you. What you tend find is that a lot of the data is historic and you will find maybe surname groups related to you that are on the family trees that other people have submitted, but not yourself. So that's your job. When you first start out doing your family history, you start with yourself and you work back. That's why you might not find yourself online at the moment.
Why can't I find my ancestors?
A lot of people hit the proverbial brick wall and can't find their ancestors and it may well be that they are looking in the wrong places, but they've also started with the wrong information. Now one of the common problems is that we refer to our uncles and aunts or parents or grandparents with certain names. They might not actually be the names under which they were born or baptized, and so you have to really interrogate the data you are given with first of all. One of the key things you do when you get started, having worked out your own background and written down what you know, is to talk to your family because if you got elderly uncles and aunts, they will probably remember their parents or grandparents and that's where the memory gets a bit hazy so you could be working with corrupt data. You need to verify everything that you've been told by your family in the records and if it doesn't stack out, then you need to look at alternatives, perhaps a different Christian name. It's very common for someone to be called Nicholas David Barrett, but to be referred to as David, for example. That's how friends and family may refer to you, but your actual name is going to be very different on the birth certificate.
What if my family are from Europe?
A lot of people have found that they've got European roots, particularly when they hit the late nineteenth century, because there was a lot of movement, particularly from Eastern Europe, into this country. If you have found, from a census return or other source, that your family come from overseas, Europe or elsewhere, and they became British citizens, you can then look for their origins in records known as naturalization papers. A certificate was granted on successful application for British citizenship, and a file was created giving people a chance to explain why they feel they should have citizenship, and also details about where they came from. These records are at the national archives and you can search the indexes now online. So anyone from Europe or, indeed, further afield, applying for British citizenship can actually be traced through naturalization records.
What if my family are from the Caribbean?
If your family are from the Caribbean, there are some very useful websites to get started on. Moving here, for example, has got a really large section on Caribbean history, and roots web have got various case studies uploaded. There are some birth, marriage, and death records on family search, but you are going to have to start finding relatives out in the Caribbean to do some of the legwork for you, because the records aren't traditionally online. You need to know roughly which island you come from, which parish the baptism or birth may have been recorded in, and then start looking at each island's local record to find out those missing links.
