Genealogy Chat

I am new to this and have made a lot of progress, but I've hit the wall. Can someone tell me why, on one site, when I access the 1871 census, England records, I find my ancestor, and yet if I go to the 1901 site and search all the census's it says no records. I've altered his year of birth, but to no avail - help, please

What is the name you are looking for?

Some names are very prone to spelling variations, that's even before you get to transcription errors so you have to develop various strategies for finding them.

For example I have the name Thornley which I search using wildcards e.g. thorn*l*y. Another name I have is Baggott, so again, I use bag*ot*

Another trick is to search using another member of the family, this sometimes brings results too. Or, if you are fortunate they were born in a small village, try leaving out the surname and putting in the birthplace.

Ages were often misquoted too, so don't put in too narrow a selection. Start wide and narrow down if you get too many. Sometimes they are almost obliterated by the enumerators marks so the transcription is almost a guess.

Also bear in mind that there are search indexes and engines for different sites are independent of each other, even though the underlying census records are identical.

Ancestry's 1851 and 1901 indexes were riddled with errors as they were rushed out prematurely, some would say. They have corrected a lot since.

The 1911 pay as you go site has a far better search index than the subscription site, and both are managed by FMP.....! They admit themselves there can be wide differences in results.

Thank you so much!!
I've just gone back into the 1901 census and put very little info in for a fuzzy search as you advised. I was looking for the name Ezekiel, but it had been mispelt as Equkiel, having gone into the original record, I now have found him and 3 other ancestors.
Kind regards and thanks again

when you find such mistakes on ancestry ..... do please make corrections.

They do take heed of them, and notify you within a couple of dyas that the changes have been made.


Have the census record on the screen

Look to the left, and youi will see a box with several headigns

Click on Add Alternate Information


It helps if you add a note to say why you are making the change, eg obviously xxxxxxx on the image; one of my ancestors





That really helps other researchers.


I haven't mentioned findmypast because I don't know whether you can make such changes on that site.




sylvia