Genealogy Chat

I cant access 1837 in the office - mainly because they don't allow me DjVu. But in case it's worth a special effort to go somewhere I can get alternate access could someone describe the access to me please. i.e. how is it indexed (name, street, heads of house only), how much success have you all been having, does it cover everywhere in England and Wales, would you consider it straightforward to use. As much feedback as you like so I can figure whether I should make a day out to go use it. Zoe.

It only covers certain areas at present, London, Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, I think. I don't know about the rest, sorry. I am waiting for 1861 to be on ancestry which I believe should be in a couple of months' time. Joy

Joy ooh - I didnt know it was gonna be that soon on ancestry. I'll just hold me horses then lovely Zoe

Hi Zoe - 1861 is indexed by name and also address, you can search the index for free (and you don't need DJVU to view the search results of course, just to view the images). Supposedly, it is a full index, not just heads-of-household. - only London/Surrey/Kent/Middlesex covered so far, and I've had limited success - have found quite a few of my London families, but others who I know were there at the time don't seem to come up. - image quality is variable, one was unreadable but 1837 refunded my credits within 24 hours when I reported it. Cost is 3 units per image viewed (about 30p). - you can work out family groups from the search results - if you hold the cursor over the 'view' link, a number comes up in the bottom panel of the browser window. This number is the same for all members of the household (a bit like the way the decoder works on the 1901 census). Richard

By the way, I've read other people's messages on rootsweb mailing lists saying that several people they know are on the 1861 census, but just do not appear in the 1837 online! Joy

Richard thank you. I may be able to work some stuff out from just the search results hopefully. Off for a play now Zoe