Genealogy Chat

Hi, are you able to advise of anywhere I can search for information as to who resided at a property? Thanks and Merry Christmas, Bev

It depends what era you are looking at, census returns give the occupants on census night, later Electoral rolls will give the names of entitled voters at an address, what about 192.com or old phone books?

Thanks Keith, I was wondering who lived in a house back in the 1800's
Best Wishes
Bev

Hi Beverly, I found a way of doing this for many of the census records on Ancestry by accident after thinking it wasn't possible for a long time!

If you do a search for someone then click through to the census year you're after, you can then wipe out all the details like name etc and replace them with just an address. This worked for me on the 1861 and 1871 census.

If you don't have an ancestry sub I don't mind looking - tell me the address (including town and county) and the year(s) you want to search in.

Eleanor

Hi Libby,

Sorry I've probably confused everyone!

What I mean you can do is wipe everything out then just bring up an exact county, parish and town by filling in those details. This is usually not very big and you can find the exact street address by going through the original images.

Sorry I probably gave people false hope there! Street addresses aren't transcribed besides 1881 and 1901. What I meant was that there is a relatively easy way to find an address even if you still have to do a bit of trawling.

Eleanor

On FreeCen, you can also search by address. in 1851, my gg gran Elizabeth Shand was living @ 12 School Street, New Pitsligo in Tyrie parish, ABD. To search for School St residents, enter year=1851, census place=Tyrie ABD and Street=School* - I use the wildcard as FreeCen does exact matches, so if the entry is School Street, a search for School St won't find it. The search then turns up 85 hits including my gg gran.
Her daur Elizabeth Cowie, my g gran, is working on a farm in the hamlet of Glaslaw in the next parish, Aberdour. Enter year=1851, census place=Aberdour ABD and Street=Glaslaw: the search then turns up 84 hits including my g gran.

The easiest way to check out the whole street is to work thru these lists clicking on the heads only. The alternative is to click on the first name, then look at neighbours forward, then backward, but the risk here is when the street name changes, you don't know if it's really the end of the street, or just a minor detour down a cul de sac. There are also problems if the street crosses Enumeration District boundaries (since the "neighbours" are really adjacent entries in the census book, not necessarily geographical neighbours, and different EDs can be many pages apart in the book), or if some household is accessed from another street. Actually the best way is to print off the list of hits, use the neighbours buttons, and cross off names on the printout, then finally check out those missed.

If you want a specific house, to avoid the complete search you'll have to hope you can recognize the residents or neighbours - it helps to live next to the vicarage here.