Genealogy Chat

I have a few tips when looking up census returns on ancestry. If you can't find someone and know where they lived there are a few options. 1st: put in first name and no surname, useful if you have a rough dob, even a county is useful if you don't mind trawling through the names! 2nd: If you have a town or village, put that in and no name, you will get the first page for that town (all alphabetical surnames) this is useful if they have been transcribed wrongly. You will also find on first index pages people with just first names and also people who used an alias! I found my missing family on 1871 and 1881 doing this, both had been totally misspelt. Hope this helps! Karen

If your missing ancestor refuses to be found and they came from a small village or hamlet, you can sometimes put in the placename and search through all the pages of that area to find them. Remember that the index will only find people whose details match the ones you put in. If your Fred Bloggs has been misrecorded as Ted Bloggs looking for Fred won't find him. You can also look for just females or males with a specific surname or birthplace. Often I've found people by looking for their relatives - so many people on censuses are staying with grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws etc. nell

Good tip Karen, didnt know that, just going to try it out on my Henry Wallace from Turnworth. Rod

My tip would be to choose the most unusual first name in the family when you do just a first name search - you dont want 5000 Johns from Bermondsey when you can have 50 Jonas.

Heather I was just going to say that. I always pick the most unusual name and search for that. Only problem is when enumerators/transcribers can't spell Tryphena, Hepzibah and the like!

True, or poor old Jonas becomes Thomas, which Ive also had!

I spent a long time looking for rellies in two censuses......the more recent one showed all their children (some over 10 years of age) to have been born in the same place, so I was frustrated that I couldn't pick them up ten years earlier. It was days and days before I noticed there was only about a third of the number of people in the parish in the earlier census than the later one......another fat missing chunk from Ancestry!! Merry

Did you whinge to them? I suppose it does mean that somewhere our missing peeps may exist on census forms.

Any tips on finding someone who was born in 1826, and managed to avoid the enumerators until 1881? Her husband missed 1841 & 1851, and then died before 1861. Of her 4 daughters, born between 1847 & 1855, two turned up in 1861 (but not with mother), and one more in 1871 (she'd got married). Never found the 4th one. Helen

Heather.....no I didn't whinge.....should have really! Helen.....Tip?? Yes.............................Keep looking! LOL Merry