Genealogy Chat

A friend had searched for many years for a family in the 1871 census. Other documents placed them in Westminster, although the couple had been born in a tiny Sussex village. By just putting the place of birth and asking for a search in Westminster, ..NO names... we found an odd looking name,... Schamers,... which turned out to be people we wanted...even though their surname started with a B, Gwyn

Alternative method if you think that someone shoul be in a praticular parish or town is to enter the place or parish but no names. Ancestry will then give an alphabetical list of names, handy to know as you can look at potential mistranscribed names and spelling variants and often pick up other members of the family in a small village.

I found my maternal grand father this way, however, Foot had been changed to Foote, and then when it was transcribed for the search pages it was transcribed as Forte. We think that some peoples handwriting is bad these days. Obviously a swirl at the end of the name had been misread as an 'e' and the second 'o' was not formed properly.

Jennifer couldn't agree more - always worth checking the next page for the odd rellie that 'popped next door' as well!!!!! Found a couple of mine like that!! Looby

I have been searching for ages on ancestry census returns for a family in Caythorpe, Lincs. I found them for every year except 1861 and I really wanted that year to try to confirm a year of birth. As they were there on all other census returns I decided to look at each page for Caythorpe for 1861, 36 pages altogether!! I found them on the last but one page, hurrah. However though I now know they are there on the census, even when I put their names into the search table nothing comes up. So what I'm saying is if you can't find who you are looking for then try looking at the pages one by one for the district you are searching. Jennifer