Family Historian User Group

On Friday Ancestry launched an index for 1881 UK Census, it is free to access and is the same index as on Family Search, but seems quicker to run. In addition if you are a subscriber all the images are available.

http://www.ancestry.co.uk

I wish they had completed the other censuses first. They were doing nicely on the 1871, then suddenly slowed down. I found this was because they were doing the 1901 even though it's already available on line. Now they have slowed down again to do the 1881. Ok, their search is different from the National Archive's one and they allow more results, and the LDS don't have the images, but I would prefer they prioritised censuses that aren't available elsewhere first. It would also be good if their search tool allowed entering a range of ages instead of just a single year. This would considerably reduce the search time.

One thing to watch out for is when a family is split over two pages. It seems the whole family have been given the same reference, so when you go to view image the youngest members may not be on the image. For example try searching for Whitbread Wagstaff, who was my 2xgreat uncle. If you view the image you will find his parents William and Sarah along with two children Ann and John. You then need to select next image to find Whitbread along with my great grandfather Arthur on the next page (I chose Whitbread for the example because he was the only one of tha name in the country). This may be even more of a problem if you ancestor was a lodger, visitor or servant who fell on the next page, you may just assume ancestry.co.uk got the reference wrong and not realise they are on the next page.

I assume this came from the original indexing by the LDS. I don't blame them for this, it was a huge task when they first accomplished it and the simplification of putting the whole household on one reference presumably saved a lot of compilation time.

I have just started to transcribe a part of the 1871 census for Newlyn, Cornwall for FreeCen.
I have learnt so much by just transcribing a few streets that I would suggest others should try it.
FreeCen's help system leaves you in no doubt that you have their support.

Have a go you will never regret it.