Friday, July 27, 2012

FindMyPast.com Searches - Post 2: English Census Records

I want to start using my brand new, shiny, www.FindMyPast.com subscription for English records, including census, civil registration and parish registers, plus whatever else I can find for the ancestors of myself and my wife.

In the first post in this series, I found U.S. Census records - see Checking Out the FindMyPast.com Search - Post 1: U.S. Census Records.  

In this post, I will go searching for English Census Records for my Richman family, and specifically my second great-grandfather, James Richman (1821-1912).  From the home page, I clicked on the "Search Records" button and filled in this information:

*  First Name = James (name variant checked)
*  Last Name = Richman (name variant unchecked)
*  Search Dates, From = 1840
*  Search Dates, To = 1870
*  Collections from: United Kingdom
*  Optional Keywords = Wiltshire

I expect to see results from the 1841, 1851 and 1861 English census records, and we'll see what else there is.

I did not use any of the Filters on the left-hand side of the screen.  Here is the Search screen:



Before I clicked on"Search," the screen above told me that there were over 628 million records in the United Kingdom collections.  Is this number the same for both the www.FindMyPast.com and www.FindMyPast.co.uk web sites (i.e., American and UK subscribers)?

With my search criteria noted above, there were 27 matches. The two screens below show the first page of the matches (there are 10 matches per page of results) that were sorted by relevance:



There are other sort criteria, and can be selected in the dropdown box shown in the second screen above. They are:

*  Sort by Relevance
*  Sort by First Name
*  sort by Last Name
*  Sort by Year
*  Sort by Category
*  Sort by Country
*  Sort by Record Collection
*  Sort by Record Set
*  Sort by Record Type
*  Sort by County

The Record Collections for these  27 matches are:

*  Census - 13
*  Births and Baptisms - 9
*  Deaths and Burials - 3
*  Marriages - 2

The Record Sets for these 27 matches are:

*  England and Wales Births, 1837-2006 - 9
*  1841 England and Wales Census - 5
* 1851 England and Wales Census - 4
*  1861 England and Wales Census - 4
*  England and Wales Deaths, 1837-2007 - 3
*  England and Wales Marriages, 1837-2008 - 2

One of the entries on the 1841 England and Wales Census list was the record for James Richman (who was in the Jno. Richman family) - two screens shown below:



Clicking on the green "Transcriptions" button shows the household member list and all of the information indexed for James Richman:


The indexed information includes:

*  First Name = James
*  Last Name = Richman
*  Collections from = United Kingdom
*  Gender = M
*  Country = England
*  Category = Census, Land and Substitutes
*  Record collection = Census
*  Record set = 1841 England, Wales and Scotland Census
*  Title = [blank]
*  County = Wiltshire
*  Year = 1841
*  Birth Year = 1821
*  Age = 20
*  Parish = Hilperton
* Street = Hilperton Marsh Lane
*  Occupation = [blank]
*  Birth County = Wiltshire
*  City = [blank]
* House Name = [blank]
*  House Number = [blank]
*  Registration District = Melksham
*  Town = [blank]
*  Inhabited = [blank]
*  Institution Name = [blank]
*  Archive Reference = H0107
*  Book = 2
*  Folio = 29
*  Page = 6
*  Piece Number = 1182 
*  Age Transcribed = [blank]
*  Page Type = 6
*  Provider = 2
*  Schedule = 255
*  Schedule Suffix = [blank]
*  Set = 35
*  Sub-District = Trowbridge
*  Transcribed Folio = 2/24
*  Where Born (other) = [blank]

I know that some of those items are important for a source citation. Here is a source citation that I crafted for this digital image based on the information above (using the RootsMagic 5 source template):

1841 England, Wales and Scotland Census, Wiltshire, Hilperton [parish], Folio 24, Page 9 (printed), Lines 7-10, John Richman household; digital image, The Natonal Archives of the UK, Kew, Surrey, FindMyPast.com (www.findmypast.com : accessed 27 July 2012); Public Record Office HO 107/1182/2.

When I created an 1851 England census source citation in Treasure Chest Thursday - 1851 English Census Record for James Richman Family, reader David Newton provided a typical "English-style" source citation as:

The National Archives of the United Kingdom, "1851 Census of England and Wales," HO 107/1840, folio 254, page 21.

So, for this 1841 English census record, the "English-style" source citation would be:

The National Archives of the United Kingdom, "1841 Census of England and Wales," HO 107/1182/2, folio 24, page 9.

If I have erred here, I'm sure one of my English friends will tell me, and I'll correct it.

Back to the FindMyPast.com results:  I could see no way to "browse" the images; in other words, to see the previous page, or the next page, or some other page in the record set.  This is a very common requirement that I,and many others, have in order to find persons residing near the target family.

I think that I will work on the Filters in the next post.  And I will look at Wild Cards in a future post.  Then there are the other record types to search and find.

The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/07/findmypastcom-searches-post-2-english.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

4 comments:

ColeValleyGirl said...

The Citation should refer to the 1841 Census of England and Wales; Scottish census returns are completely separate documents.

Randy Seaver said...

Hi ColeValleyGirl,

I knew that...but what I was citing was the FindMyPast.com set of census records that clearly states it is for England, Wales and Scotland. Apparently, FindMyPast, for whatever reason, has put the two datasets together into one dataset.

We are told to cite what we use, and that is what I used.

Audrey Collins said...

Randy's citations are absolutely fine. He correctly cites the online source as the Findmypast collection, which includes Scotland. His document citation (the kind I prefer, because it will never change)is also correct; the census of England and Wales, held by The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Randy, it actually makes quite a lot of sense for FMP to group all of these censuses together, because they are identical in format, although the subsequent archival referencing is different for Scotland. In fact, the Scottish censuses of 1841 and 1851 were administered by the General Register Office for England and Wales, and the enumeration books were only returned to Scotland just over a century ago.

It's not easy getting to grips with the finer points of the various jurisdictions within the British Isles, and Americans often get it wrong (as do we Brits sometimes), but this time the American is spot on!

Martin said...

FYI: http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/07/30/terms-of-use-findmypast-com/

Evidently you can't use those images even in a blog.