Genealogy Chat

A few weeks ago I used the 1901 Government census records, and had great difficulty getting the site to accept vouchers. After telephoning them I finally got through. I wanted to check a few facts today so used their person search. Lo and behold, my whole family had disappeared in spite of the fact that all the facts are correct. I tried several families living in the same area and they've disappeared too. Are they waiting for me to put my money in or do you think they are so busy the search engine says 'no record'?

Dorothy, you can download the decoder from www(.)censusdecoder(.)com, free. It allows you to extract, say, all the 'Smiths' in Littlehampton, & sort them by id number. Adjacent numbers are at the same address. Easy after a bit of practice, Marian

(that was reply to your query on the other thread, sorry)

The 1901 site is very very picky, especially with places. Unlike the LDS site it's got no intelligence about names or places at all, it just matches strings of letters against strings of letters. So it doesn't know that Yorkshire and Yorks and York and Yks are all the same county, and it doesn't know that Leeds (or even York) is in Yorkshire. It doesn't show my Reading ancestors if I specify Reading, because the county is Berkshire, the civil parish is "St Giles" on the sheet, and nobody has had the wit to realise that this has to be indexed as the full name Reading St Giles Some of my ancestors don't show up if I give any placename at all, because the enumerator didn't fill in the boxes at the top of that particular sheet (the names were or would have been the same all through the book), so they've just left blanks in the index, and nothing matches a blank except a blank. It's not a question of knowing the facts about your ancestors, it's a case of trying to guess exactly what's in the database

I seem to have had more luck by not entering anything in the "where born" slot Terry

Hi Dorothy I would also recommend the decoder, I use it all the time and have found it invaluable. Regards Maxine

I've also found that as little info as possible works best with the 1901. Sue.

Tried being as unhelpful as possible and it worked. I still say it's the nastiest search engine I've come across. Thanks for the suggestions offered.

I would certainly agree Dorothy - the phrase "money making opportunity" springs to mind!

Here here Maxine - 48hours time limit is the limit!!!!!

I know where you are coming from Sue- it takes me 48 hours to remember why I'm there!!!