Genealogy Chat

Thanks for the advice so far. As an update and based on the advice I received elsewhere on this site, I have just found the record of my Great-Grandfathers Marriage in 1877, however the surname was badly mis-spelt, from Roworth to Rowreth, which is a variation I haven't come across before. The site was familysearch.org which I found very useful.

The advice to search using 1st names only is very good. I had Smiths transcribed as Waitt, my personal favourite!
Jan

After many, many years of searching for first name Ethelbert SMELT I eventually found it transcribed as Ethel But SMELT !! Don't give up..........

Why don't you take GlitterBaby's advice and post the details. I'm sorting and cleaning at the moment and I'd love the challenge.

Txs for the advice folks, I'll go back to searching. :-)

Or Humphreys transcribed as Hampshire!!

Another suggestion - if you can, try using more than one site, as they all use different transcribers.

Sometimes they do not appear no matter how hard you look.
EG
No trace in 1841/1851/1861

Florence Abrahams (Nee Rowe)
Birth: abt 1823 - Falmouth, Cornwall, England
Residence: 1871 - Southampton, St Mary, Hampshire, England
Her son
Henry Abrahams
Spouse: Martha C Abrahams
Birth: abt 1846 - Falmouth, Cornwall, England
Residence: 1871 - St Mary, Hampshire, England

To add to Jonesey's list, if the person concerned had children who would have been alive in a preceding/following census, try searching for the children, just putting in their christian name, YOB +/- 2, and the parents' christian names. With some mistrancriptions, this is the only way to find them. Well, would you expect Voslans to actually be Postans!

There are many reasons why our ancestors do not appear in the census records where we expect them to be.

Census enumerators may have misheard what they were being told. They may have spelled names differently (Remember that there is no such thing as standardised spelling of names) or because they were human just like us they may have simply made a mistake.

The next step in the recording process is transcribing the record itself. Trying to decipher someone else’s handwriting is not always easy and often results in the record being incorrectly transcribed. Once again the people doing the transcribing are human so mistakes are made. Mistranscriptions can be very frustrating.

Here is a tip which may help you to find who you are searching for.

Type the persons forename into the census search form but leave the surname box completely empty. You can do this in reverse if you wish, entering a surname but leaving the forename box empty. Remember that people often used a different 1st name from the one they were born/baptised with. E.G. Dick = Richard, Harry = Henry, Nellie = Eleanor, Betsy = Elizabeth ect. Be aware also of common enumerators abbreviations such as Thos = Thomas, Hy = Henry, Wm = William ect

Type the persons birth year +/- 2 or +/- 5 years. Some people were not sure how old they were or they may have deliberately lied about their age to make themselves appear younger or older than their spouse. Children’s ages in census returns are generally more likely to be accurate than those of adults.

Type in their birth county/birthplace. Sometimes it pays to leave the birthplace blank because that too may have been misheard, misspelled or mistranscribed. Some people genuinely did not know their exact place of birth or may even have lied for various reasons.

If necessary use wildcards such as "*" or "?" in the surname to try to reveal a name where wrongly transcribed letters may have changed a name. E.G. Pegden, Pigden, Pigdon, Pagden.
Entering P?gd* will reveal all those options plus many others if using Ancestry.

Press "Search". This will bring up a list of all the people with that name of approximate age born in that county/place. Scroll through the list (It may be a long list) and hopefully you will find your missing ancestor shown as Borne instead of Bourne or Wilks instead of Wilkes or similar. It doesn't always work but it might.

Look for patterns in words rather than names just beginning with the 1st letter of the correct name. E.G. Baldrick has 8 letters and ends 'ick' as does Coldrick. Anyone looking for someone called Tucker may well be shocked to discover how some of their ancestors were mistranscribed.

Good luck with your search.

Try using just the first name with year and place of birth. Could be just mistranscribed.

Also some members put too much info in the search boxes

This narrows down the results.

Some times the mistranscription errors are more obvious to some people than others

Things such as "ll" often get put as "tt" or vice versa.
Earlier census "fs" is used for "ss".
K and H - m and n - y and g - just to name a few possible errors

The list is endless as to what some one reads the information as

Mistrancribed, census pages lost or too mutilated to transcribe. Lots of reasons why some cant be found .plus lots didn't know their ages or where they were born so info differed from census to census

Post some details

Sure the members would love a challenge

Does anyone know why a relative will appear in the 1881 Census, but does not appear in previous census returns despite having a DOB of 1853?

Am I searching incorrectly - or just nuts, which is what it is making me :-S