Okay, so we are now going to search the census records. And I'm going to try and do this all in one go. So, and this could be a fairly long lecture. So make sure you've got enough time if you want to see it all through. I've chosen somebody in my family who was alive for most of the census records. So that we can sort of see a kind of continual search for the same person going backwards.

And I'm going to search for him as if I didn't know some of the details about him. So as if I was searching for him on the senses for the first time. So you can kind of get an idea of the experience of searching for somebody for the first time. So now I'm going to search for my great grandfather on my father's side. So my father's grandfather, and he was called john bought same as my father. And let's say that all I know about him was that he died in 1921 in Prestwich and that his wife's name was Mary Jane.

So now with answer with ancestry, Jason, we always start from the known and we work backwards. So when you're searching for somebody in the census, you you want to start with the last census they're going to be in. So we know as you died in 1921, he's going to be in the 1911 census. Now, on ancestry, you can go straight to any one of the census records over here. You can go to all of the census records. I think some people probably go to Or you can go to search and just click on sensors and that'll bring you the electoral rolls up to.

But as always, I particularly when you're searching for the first time I do recommend searching one set of records at a time otherwise you can get confused. So I would recommend that we go straight to the 1911 census records and do a search there. Okay. So let's have a go so we know that his name was john boat. We know that he lived in Iraq or around Prestwich in Lancashire, so that comes up. I'm now a date of birth.

If we know vaguely when somebody died, we might have a vague idea of Their Date of Birth for the moment I'm going to leave that open just to see what comes up. Because you won't always know these records and, and we know that his spouse was married. So that's quite useful extra to put in yet to see what comes up with just those criteria. Okay, so now that's quite interesting. Okay, if we look down here, the one at the top is the closest match. And if we look down, we've got quite a few john box, but that's as fast as Mary Ellen.

That's Mary Ann. So as you can see, it's always very useful to put in a spouse name where you can because it does narrow down the criteria. So none of these look terribly likely that does look like the one at the top and also it It's brought up one of the children's names now. My grandfather's name was Walter. So that looks very much like it's going to be the right one. And the residents of North Manchester there, which seems about right, so let's have a look at this.

So again, you'll get a transcript here, but of course, you do want to go and look at the original record, we're going to do that in just a minute. I just want to note one thing you might have noticed this when I was searching the 1939 register as well. Ancestry does a very useful thing. On the right hand side here on this transcript page, you'll see a list of suggested records down the right hand side. This can be very useful for going back and finding other records for your ancestor but dude, But they are not necessarily always going to be the right person. They are just suggestions.

But certainly we might, it can, you know, shorten your search time by going to look at these but you must make sure that you've got the right person before you do that. Or check you know, when you click on one of these, you know, check that the details match everything else that you have. We're going to come back to that in just a minute. So for now, let's have a look at what the 1911 census looks like. Right? tibia, so this is what the 1911 census looks like.

It's quite different from all the other census records you will see at the moment although I I am guessing that 1921 census record will look fairly similar. Um Okay, so what one of the major differences is that you have a household to one page. So every single household has its own page and we have the information we have his name and surname. There's more, a few more details that you can read. I'm not going to go through all that relationship to have a family age, last birthday, particular system, marriage, professional occupation, birthplace, nationality, and any infirmities let's have a look at that in more detail. So under name and surname.

We've got john Bhatt. Yes, Mary Jane. And then we've got three of them. No two of their children. Walter, he was my grandfather. And Frank and yes, that's I know that my father had an uncle Fred.

So that is all correct. And we've also got a rose Florence who has a daughter in law so she is married. Not to Walter or not to fret because as you can see, they are both single. So she's married to one of their other sons, presumably, that's interesting. You find quite interesting, always interesting to look at who else is in the household as well as the immediate family because it can lead you to other bits of information. So relationship to have a family so we have the head of household, that's always the top one.

It's usually the usually the husband or if the wife has been widowed, then it could be the mother, the wife, or widowed wife, whatever. And so Mary Jane is his wife bought his son Frank bought his son and daughter in law that's all straightforward. There are occasionally errors in this pay in these pages. These records as we might see later on age and sex, that's the age is split up into male and female that is the same on every census. So as we can see here, john of 62. Now that gives us an approximate date of birth.

So if we use a calculator, you will have, I really, really recommend that you have a calculator to hand when you're tracing ancestry, because you will find yourself doing lots of sums and you get fed up of doing these in your head then a calculator with very useful that gives an approximate birth date of 1864. So then we would then write that down so when we're searching for him again, we have a much easier time of it. So we want to note all these birth down Mary Jane 64 and so on. Now, particularly To marriage 1911 census gives us a lot more information here. First of all, we've got married, married, single, single and married, which all the other census records have. But this one is different here.

We have the number of years, the couple has been married. So for john and Mary Jane, they have been married 35 years now is really, really useful because it means we should be easily able to find their marriage when we go and look for it. Obviously, there's none for that and for Florence. She's been married for under one year. And another interesting little bit of information on the 1911 census is children born alive to the present marriage, children and that split up into three columns. children born alive, children still living and children who have died.

So we know They had seven children all together. So again, you know, that helps us if we want to go looking children still living six children who have died, there was one child who had died. And I know from what my father is said that that was a young Emily bought. And we actually have a photograph of her grave, which is quite moving. So, and, you know, talking about that it's very, very common, right up until really the middle of the 20th century to have children dying, especially poor of the family as the more children generally die young so you will find a lot of infant mortality and professional occupation. john was a carpenter and In the 1911 census, it tells you the interest CLI industry or service they were connected with.

He's a municipal carpenter. So presumably he was working on public buildings, a worker as opposed to an employer. And sometimes it puts in here to say whether they're working at home but not in this case, birthplace now this is always very useful for further searches. I really need to make a note of this. JOHN volte was born in Birmingham. Now that might have been if I'd been searching from scratch, it might have been used to me.

So it's very, very useful information. And his wife was born in Yorkshire. In Multan, again, very, very useful because they're, they're both living presently nine Gene 11 in a place very different from where they were born. And you can see that two children were born in Manchester. But Florence, the daughter was born in London. Now one thing we do have on the 1911 census down here, always have a look down here because that is the exact address of where they are living.

And also has the signature of the head of household which is quite nice to see. The postal address is 28. do use breath that is St. Cheatham. You can check that if you can't see there it is also at the top. Cheatham there. Okay, so that's the 1911 census. So I've pointed out all the major things just coming over to Right here, I didn't know I didn't take this into consideration.

Nationality is shown only if they were born in a foreign country. So see, there's nothing there. Don't worry about these extra marks here you sometimes see it sometimes in a different color pen. They are enumerative marks put in later on when they're doing countertops or whatever. So you don't you you don't need to pay much attention to those sorts of things. And a final column infirmity usually if somebody is blind or deaf, but also horrible phrases lunatic or imbecile which we now think of as quite non PC but of course, different times.

I mean, you know, back in the Victorian times, that covered a wide range of things that we would now call special needs or psychological disorders or what have you. But yeah, so don't be too alarmed if you find anything in there. Right, let's just go back now, we now know that my grandfather was born in about 19 1848. And so what's the next census we can look at? Well, let's have a look down here and see what it suggests we've got a 1901 census. So let's have a look at that and see if it matches up.

Does it is very useful, that suggested record thing. As I say, Do make sure all matches up but it does save you some searching time. So this all looks correct. If about 1849, that's a that's an acceptable level of variation. Mary Jane again And we've got, yeah, there's Walter and there's Frank. And there's a few more children there.

So it's all looks correct. Now you will see when the 1901 census comes up that it looks very different to the 1911 census. There you go. So what we have here is they just filled up the page with every household. So at the top here, you can see the county of Lancaster. So parish of Manchester parish of St. john the baptist.

No sorry, St. JOHN the evangelist. And it's in Cheatham, the para urban district of Cheatham now we can differentiate the different households by looking down here. First of all, you've got the addresses Don't pay any attention to the numbers on the far left, they are just shedule numbers. These are the actual addresses down here. So you can tell the different households but also you'll get a little double line here on the 1901 census at the end of each household. So let's find the bolts.

Here we are just down here see john bought and they're living at number 10. You go up the page do by the way, is short for ditto. And it's Hewitt Street. So they are living at number 10 Hewitt Street and these little information about each of the houses. You probably don't need to pay too much attention to these That just means where each house is in inhabited occasion you come across an empty house with that, that doesn't really sort of have anything for you to worry about. Sometimes it's quite useful.

Down here it has a number of rooms if less that can't meet that, let me just bring that up a bit. So number of rooms occupied if less than size, this actually can be quite useful because we can see it gives you a clue as to their kind of status. So if you've got a large household and you've got just say two or three rooms, you can see that they were probably living in very crowded housing. So if that's not marked, and you know, they're living fairly comfortably So let's have a look at what else we've got it. So again, we've got name and surname, obviously. And then relation to head of family.

So we've got head Wife, Son, son, daughter, daughter will often be abbreviated to either do u r or W. So we've said we've got Stanley and Emily and Walter Frank, nobody else in the household as you see it goes on to the next household there. And again this column is conditioned as to marriage. So, m m M stands for married S stands for single, sometimes you get a W which stands for widowed out or you or un m instead of single means unmarried. As children under a certain age, they often just leave it blank and then Again, you've got the double column with male and female and the relevant ages. And john bought here is a joiner. joiner.

Carp, obviously stands for carpenter. So that fits in with the other record we add. Stanley was a solicitor of Clark. Emily was a milliner. That was the second child Emily, the younger one, that one that died and Walter was a solicitors Clark. So this next column is employer work or or own account.

So work means they're employed by somebody. An account usually means kind of self employed. Zero they're not quite sure what that means. And then if working at home, and then were born. So as we can see, again, john Buck was born in Birmingham that all fits. Now you will.

That's the 1901 census. You will find all the census records back to 1851, a more or less the same, although there will be some differences so we'll have a quick look. And then it no one senses you've got this column for deaf and dumb blind, lunatic or imbecile. Terrible description feeble minded. So there's nobody on that page who is listed as any of those. So let's go back again.

We'll have a quick look at the other records, so 1891 Let's check that. Again, this looks very much like the right person. So Let's have a look at this one. Okay, so as you can see, very, very similar to the 1901 census and as john moving on 11 Albert street here. And that's a few differences. This column here is slightly different with a cross for employer or employed or neither.

And apart from that, it's very much the same. Okay? Nothing much else to show you that. So let's go back and look at 1881 So, again, we've got Mary Jane there. Wait with bated breath. There we go.

And there's john at the bottom of the page now living on Mustin lane. Possibly. We'll see as you go further back in time the the addresses often become a bit bit vaguer. And writing on here isn't so good again, you'll come across that quite often. Really difficult handwriting. We've got an extra person in the household here and Margaret Appleby, who's a nice again, all these names always worth writing down because if you have any problems later on Something like a nice with that name can help you identify the right family.

And so again, not too much to add here. You will notice though that on the 1881 census, there's no column for whether they were employer or employed. It's just the occupation. But again, you've got that column for all these infirmities and nothing shown there. So again, pretty much the same. Let's see if we can find him in 1871.

It's right down here. So we've got we're born Birmingham the assets right now. No Notice here this is obviously before he was married and notice to this spelling, it was obviously going to be, this is our john bot here, but I think this is probably going to be a transcription error. Now this is obviously going to be before his marriage. And if we want to wanted to look at his marriage, we're not going to do that now because we're focusing on the census but there that will be his marriage record, probably they're also interestingly, come down here and see national probate calendar that he left a will. Now, I'm not looking at wills within this particular course, but they can be very, very useful.

So that might be worth looking at and ordering that for now. We are going to go over to 1871, which hopefully will tell us more because before his marriage You might have been living out there. But he was a boarder it looks like so we might not see his parents here. Right. So there's john Bach born in Isa join us. So that fits with everything else we seen.

We are constantly constantly when you're doing any kind of historical research, need to be checking every record against the other records you have, if something, I mean, obviously, you know, there are errors, you know, sometimes you'll get a different place of birth at different age. So there are margins of error, but occasionally, something will not fit at all Well, and that should ring alarm bells. So you need to check, check, check, you've got the right person. So, and then, you know, the people he's living with here, they're called, it's given the name as boot. Now it could be the page Because it's he's just given a border here, and he's unmarried I just met, these are not necessarily his parents. So that's quite interesting.

So maybe there were court boots, maybe that is just a coincidence, which is quite interesting. And this looks like number four Woodley Street. And always check to when you write down the details of the fences. Just make sure you note down exactly where we are. Here we are in the St. George's parish of Manchester. Something you should always be checking first, as well.

Okay. Um, again, very similar to the 1881 census here. Let's go further back. Now Hoping as you go further back before the marriage, you should start hoping to find the person living with their parents. Now, here's an interesting thing all along. He's been just john bought.

But on these suggested records, we've got john W. bought anything see their transcription error of john W. bat. So let's have a look at this and see if it's the right person. So the birth date is about right. The birth town is right. Now, let's have a look. Now, if I was searching from scratch here, I might at this point probably before I went back this far, I probably look at his marriage to Mary Jane.

And because on the marriage you would have as we have looked at before and if you're following the parish register record which as we know is the same as the civil registration record, you would have his father's name. So we would then be able to check whether we had the right record on the census and various other details. Now, unfortunately, at this stage, we've got a wait a minute it is wild. So let's now on this sense, as you can see, the bot household is at the top of the page in King Edward's street in Birmingham. There's john now he's got we now find that we hear he has a middle name. Beginning with W. Let's just go back because at the top of the page, you've got Louisa his mother, wife is not widow, so obviously she's not the head of her So sometimes if the household is across two pages, you're going to have to click on this arrow or that arrow over there to go back and see who else is in the household.

So you can see the beginning of the household underneath that double line there. Another john w bought. Now, if I had looked at john bought marriage, I would have found that his wife's name was Mary Jane stamper. And on the marriage record, it may or may not have had his middle name. And it would tell us that his father's name was john Walker. But so we would then know when we searched the census records, that we have the right person here.

Otherwise, we might have been a little bit doubtful, but that's why you need to as I said before, you We'll be looking at census records alongside several registration and parish register records as you go along. So let's just go back to where we were. So again, very similar set of records. We got all John's siblings here, so we've gone back to his own family. So that's very useful. Writing here is horrible.

But if we looked at that, it's, it's not you can always press on here and enlarge it to get that and if we go back again, we can see that his father's pace of birth was Newcastle. Very good, just enlarge that you might not be able to read that. But with a practice I could see and I happen to know anyway. But that is Newcastle, Staffordshire, not Newcastle on time in Durham, but Newcastle underlined in Staffordshire. So always check, you've got the right place because there are a lot of places in England that name the same. So always check that you've got the right one.

Okay, and so we need to make sure we write down the details of his parents. So john, W bought the bricklayers bricklayer, I think that says that he's an employer and I do happen to know that this time of his life john Walker bought was a bricklayer and employer. Later he would in later census records he would be described as a builder and He's quite an interesting chap, because he built himself up from quite a lonely background to being self employed. self made, man really. So anyway, that's that. So you can see how useful the census records are, as you go further back finding the parents more details about the parents taking you back another generation.

So let's go back to the first record census record, our john would be in that is the 1851. And as you can see, that's a transcription error. But interestingly, ancestry in it suggested record has come up because all the records match, then it's given that bat as a suggestion. So that's useful. So here we are in Birmingham. Here we are the father john W. bot, bricklayer.

You can see that a little bit more clearly a Staffordshire, Newcastle, his wife, Louisa, and their children and there's john W. Or you can see the 1851 is a little bit different. Instead of putting the double line for the change of household they put this sort of they're rather sick, ugly looking line across, in between each household, which they change for the next census probably because it was a little impractical because maybe it ended up crossing out people's names or what have you. And then, up here on this thing, you've got just blind or deaf and dumb. For some reason, they will check that I presume the enumerators, you find enumerators do odd things, but I think they probably take that thinking that that's to say that they were all right. I don't know. But it's very strange.

So there we go. Now if we wanted to, we know that our john bought the young john Walker boat was born in 1848. So we know that he won't be on the 1841 census. But if we want to look at his father, we could go down and click on his father here. And then that should bring up suggestions for him on the right here. Ah, but it's not going to give us the 1841 senses.

That's a shame. So let's Go up to here, go up to a census. I do want to show the 1841 census because it's quite different to the others. Okay 1841 now that we know he's john Walker, I thought that'd be really clever. I would have been writing down the details as I go along. I just need to just have a quick check on his date of birth, which was 1814 New Castle underlying Staffordshire.

Now, we got no way whether it was living in Birmingham in 1841 or not. So let's just leave that open and see if we find if he comes up. Now the 1841 census is always a little bit trickier to search because there's fewer details and therefore, obviously fewer search criteria, and the ages are much vaguer. So you can see there's a few possibilities, all of them born in Stafford chair that goes to john box 118 13 1816. And another one there could all be my john, on this one is john Barth, but he's getting a new car cylinder line. So that could be worth looking at too.

You can check the transcript sometimes by just hovering over there and having a look down here that looks like person who's in boarding somewhere though, let's have a look at the see if I can recognize anything. So this could be a little bit more difficult. They need to know a little bit more about them sometimes to search the 1841 census, because as I say, you know, and you'll often find them you might think that blocked is a, quite an unusual name. But look at just look at how many there are. It's certainly it's a Staffordshire name. So you know, you will find sometimes clusters and names in particular areas.

So he's looking a little bit difficult. So in this case, if I was searching, I'd probably go away and do a little bit more digging and see if I could find more details about him. You're not going to be able to put the spouse name in the 1841 census. And you see I've put birth place of birth now that is actually not going to come up anyway because the 1841 census doesn't give an exact place of birth it is whether or not born in the same County. So let's say in Birmingham might be more useful. Just see if he looks likely.

Mm hmm. is yes, not sure. Not sure none of those look right. And see just how difficult this census can be to search. Let's just have a look. I'm not going to go on too long with this mom.

Sure I got his 1841 census records somewhere but I'm just showing you just some of the difficulties of searching particularly the 1841 census. So let's have a look and see if this makes any sense. So that looks like hinge make. I'm not absolutely sure. We do have that the name says children. I do believe that you did have a child called Joseph and child called Alfred.

So this may be him and he also had had two marriages. This petition Killer, john, so this may be him. But again, we would have to really really check with other records. Now, let's just have a look at this sentence as well. We're here. I'm not going to carry on.

Boy you Richard by searching again for him just just have a look see what's on the 1841 census. You see here the page, you actually get two pages on it to a page, as it were. You've got a place which is not necessarily an exact address is in this case, you get the street, not the actual name. Sometimes you'll just get the name of the village here. Name, no relation to head of household. Age, it says age but actually it is rounded to the nearest five.

You'll see it's 55 6025 These are rounded down. So you need to be very wary of that when you're looking for a birth because these ages are not attack unless they are and usually for anyone under 15 they do give an exact age. So just the profession trade. What have you had on here instead of Place of Birth you get weather born in same County. So this will be either a wife a yes or an N for No. So you can see here the wife of this john bought at at and also john bought himself.

That is an N for No. So all we know is not born in same counties. Well, we'll be the right person in here. On this last column you've got whether born in Scotland, Ireland or foreign parts. So let's come down find somebody down further down the page in this household, you've got a john column just says s. So presumably that is Scotland. So you sometimes just get the initial if they are from foreign part much as a foreign, if you are lucky, you might get the name of the country.

So you can see that the problems the 1841 sentences, because there is less information, it's more difficult to research as you can see. So, there you are, um, that's a very swift journey back through the census and I hope you have enjoyed it and Next, and it's up to you to do your own searches. So we'll have a talk about that. Next