Family Historian User Group

Or should that be 'censi'?

Anyway, what's the score? Do they only become public domain after 100 years? Or did I imagine that one up?

Which censuses (sic) apart from 1901 are also available on-line? Reading through a thread on this forum, there's a promising site called 'freecen.rootsweb.com'.

Has anybody used this site successfully?

Thanks
Mike

ID:392

There is a campaign to release the 1911 census, but in general 100 years apply. The 1881 is available on the LDS site, see the newbie tread in this forum.

The 1891 and part of the 1871 are available for ancestry.co.uk members, but its expensive. The images are good and easy to download though.

The freecen project is good, but does not provide images and does not cover much of the country at the moment.

Jane is right but there is no chance of the 1911 census being released before January 2012.

If you use online censuses you must bear in mind that the misindexing and mistranscription rates are high -- easily 10%+, I would suggest, on Ancestry (1871 in part, 1891 in totality and 1901 in part, with all the rest to follow this year and next) with no easy error-reporting facility. TNA's 1901 census continues to improve but is still flawed. Family Search's 1881 census is free but there are no images and you are at the mercy of the transcribers' misindexing with no opportunity to check a reference (the redeeming feature with the other two sites).

FreeCen is unlikely to become of much help to the population at large for some time yet -- cf freeBMD in its early days.

If your ancestors were in Devon in 1891 then freecen is excellent - 90% coverage at present.  Transcription errors are minimal.  Used together with S and N's Devon 1891 CDs it makes life very easy. [smile]

Also note that the censuses available free on the web are for England and Wales only. [frown]

I am actually one of the Co-ordinators for the Scottish Section of the UK FreeCen Project.  

The UK FreeCen Project aims to transcribe the Census Records for 1841 - 1871 and 1891 and collate them onto a free-to-view database on the internet to be viewed by anyone worldwide.  The 1881 Census is available for purchase from the LDS.  The last time I checked it was priced at £29.95 including postage within the UK.  The product includes approximately 30 CD's covering all of the UK.

The Project is not yet complete and indeed will take quite a period to complete, however if you are anyone else would like to assist in the Project you can contact the County Co-ordinator for the Area you are interested in.

Please visit freecen.rootsweb.com then choose 'transcriptions' from the column on the left hand side of the page this will then list the Regional Status Pages for all areas within the UK.

If anyone would like any further information please do not hesitate to contact me or visit my webpage www.freecen.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

Kind Regards

Suzy Cairns
Berwick, Peebles and Selkirk County Co-ordinator for the UK FreeCen Project
www.freecen.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

As most of my research is in Cornwall - with a little run-over to the West Country - I bought the 1841 and 1861 census from Archive CD Books and they have proved invaluable but some of the paler pages can give you red-eye (non-photographic).
I now await the issue of the 1871 census
but again just for Cornwall.[cool]