Genealogy Chat

Hallo Geoff & Richard Thanks so much for replying. From what you both say, It does look like it is worth having. I shall find the site and download it. Lynda

Hi Lynda The 1901 census decoder has two main benefits, as far as I can tell: (1) You can load the results from your search, or several searches, into a list. You can then sort and save this list to Excel or a similar program. (2) The main advantage is that the decoder grabs the internal page number, which is normally invisible to the user of the 1901 site. Every name on a page in the original census will have the same page number - therefore, the decoder allows you to see if two or more names from your search were on the same census page or not. Note that it does not give you the street address or the relationship of people to the head - for that, you still have to pay. However, in many cases you can use it to sort out a list of names from your search into family groups. The decoder can be downloaded for free from www(.)censusdecoder(.)com/index.htm (remove brackets!). Once installed, it runs like a normal program from your start menu. Make sure that you also download the help file from the same site. Richard

When you do a search on 1901 you could end up with (say) 32 Nesbitts living in Cumberland, but you have no idea who lived with whom. If you use the decoder on those results it will split them into batches of people who are recorded on the same census page - there is a fair chance that people on the same page are in the same family. (Of course a family group could be split between two pages but every little bit of information we get can could be helpful.)

I have seen that several people have used it, so it obviously must be worth trying, but could someone please explain how it works, and the actual benefit. Many thanks Lynda