* Best way to search a Census

[AlanFlint]

Hello again,

In trying to capture Census data, maybe I'm going about the task in the wrong way. Trying to pin down a particular parish is taking me much longer, even for a reasonably sized rural parish, than I would have expected. I have gone through the 1841 Census, the 1851 Census, and now am trying to capture all the Allen names on the 1861 Census in the Parish of Ashover.

I am bringing up the Census pages, literally Piece by Piece, Folio by Folio, Page by Page, visually scanning them for instances of the name I am interested in, and then moving on to the next part of the same parish, and then repeating the process. For instance, the particular Parish of Ashover, in Derbyshire, can, for the 1861 Census, be found on two Pieces. I was made aware in a recent thread that just pulling up the Civil Parish of Ashover doesn't get all of the Hamlets and Townships that comprise the whole parish, that is why I am using the search facility at the National Archive to find the Districts which each part of the parish is in.

Another thing that is slowing me down is that I am doing this using the online search at Ancestry. Whether it's my laptop, or Ancestry itself I don't know, but parts of the pages sometimes get hidden by white blocks, which cover often crucial parts of the page. However, I discovered that I can clear these 'blocks' by refreshing the page. All this does, of course, take more time.

An example which explains the difficulty of capturing all the parish is that the drop-down menu which on Ancestry invites me to select County / Civil Parish etc.. doesn't, as I said, necessarily pick up all the parish. To further illustrate the problem, I can select Derbyshire, then the Civil Parish of Ashover, then a sub-district (Enumeration District) in order to see all the census pages for the Parish of Ashover. I had to do this at least four times, selecting the Civil Parishes of Ashover, Ashover Milltown, Dethick & finally Holloway so that all the areas within the 1861 version of the Parish of Ashover were covered. The last three places named were not, in 1861, parishes in their own right. Maybe it has become more of an issue because living locally, I am aware that these places were in the Parish of Ashover in 1861. I wouldn't, of course, be as confident of all the areas if I was looking at another parish, of which I wasn't so aware.

I do want to see the names in each household, so that is why I chose to view the actual pages, rather than look at the transcribed version of the entries.

Originally, I thought by starting local, it would give me more of a chance of making progress, but so far the opposite is the case.

You folks were so kind last time in answering my original query, I wondered whether some of you might give me a little bit of guidance on the way forward and whether my present method is not the one I should be using, perhaps even suggesting a better way to achieve my goal.

Yours hopefully,

Alan

[tatewise]

Hi Alan,
I don't know if this helps, but Ancestry offers me a Search filter that includes Ecclesiastical parish below the names and family members, and I used that rather than Browse this collection on right for County and Civil Parish.

AncestrySearch.png (15.11 KiB) Viewed 6437 times

To get that I click SEARCH in main toolbar top left and choose Census & Electoral Rolls.
Then in Narrow by Category on right chose 1861 U.K. Census Collection.
Then in Included data collections: at bottom chose 1861 England Census.

I entered Last Name as Allen and Ecclesiastical parish as Ashover with Exact ticked.
That Search yields 18 results in Derbyshire.
How does that compare with your image scan technique?

Searching with Ecclesiastical parish as Ashover Milltown, or Dethick, or Holloway yields nothing in Derbyshire.

[AlanFlint]

Hi,

Thank you again for your valuable contribution! You are indeed a megastar!

The total figure of 18 agrees with mine for those ALLEN's living in Ashover and its outlying hamlets, but some names were duplicated by being part of the same household, but shown separately in Ancestry's list.

The area then was built around small agricultural communities, so some hamlets were quite small. My 18 were found by determining the area of RG 9 /2525 that covered Ashover Parish and checking each household.

Again, by checking the index at the National Archive, I found that RG 9/2518 also included parts of what I believe to have been in the Parish of Ashover. The number of ALLEN's found by this method yielded another 6 people.

Looking by Ecclesiastical Parish works absolutely fine, so long as the Enumerator wrote that on the Census form he completed. I have noticed that not all enumerators were as diligent in completing the sections at the top of each Census page. RG 9/2518 as it relates to Holloway has the word Parish crossed out and the phrase Township of Holloway written in. There is no mention of which Ecclesiastical Parish it is in. So, there is no wonder that a search based on Ecclesiastical Parishes did not find it.

However, here, by way of example, is the Description page for District 14 (which is the one for The Township of Holloway):

"Superintendent Registrar's District - Belper
Sub-District - Wirksworth

All that remaining part of the Township of Dethick Lea and Holloway which comprises the Hamlet of Holloway in the Parish of Ashover including Upper Holloway and the Common Side."

Just as a matter of interest, I have come across some old Parish Boundary maps on the Internet which seem to confirm my understanding of the Parish of Ashover's boundary in 1861, and certainly until 1901.

I guess that I shall have to be content to dig a little deeper and to proceeding more slowly than I had hoped! Unless of course, you have any other suggestions which might help.

Regards,

Alan

[AnneEast]

Are you able to visit the local central library or Archive for the area? You might find it easier to do visual scans of census areas and pages on microfilm or microfiche. Before the advent of searches like Ancestry and others provide, I bought CDs with whole county censuses and went through them page by page ..... how times change but in your case it still might give the best result.

I am slightly intetested in your search for the ALLEN surname. My particular one name study (ARRAND, HARRAND) has a group of HARRAND families regularly calling themselves ALLEN in all sorts of records, mainly in the Goole and north Lincolnshire areas. I can only suppose that some of them had very bad pronunciation! I have learned to search for this unexpected name as well.

Anne

[gwilym'smum]

Hi,
I agree with Anne. I have all the census cds for Staffordshire and although I have both Ancestry and FMP I still return to my discs to check that the online providers have not missed anything. Like Anne I spent many hours going through each disc and found many people I would have missed just looking on line. Relatives turned up and patterns emerged. Trouble was it was expensive if your relatives crossed county borders.
Ann

[AlanFlint]

Hi Anne & gwilym'smum

Truth to tell, the County Record Office is only seven miles away, in Matlock, so in one sense it would be relatively easy to visit there. However, my experience of microfiche at Matlock is that it very much depends on whether you get a good mf-reader or not. Time-wise, I imagine that allowing for the travel involved an online search might still be quicker, even allowing for its imperfections.

I have used discs for BMD's, but not for anything else. I will check out the availability of such discs for Derbyshire.

The convenience of doing an online search via Ancestry or FMP tends to be my preferred option, it's just the fact of ensuring all the parts within a particular Census area are captured. It seems from my 'conversation' with Mike, that there are several ways of getting to the same, albeit that some parts are not all logged in quite the same way by Ancestry.

Just as an aside, I think that I mentioned in one of my posts, that I had experienced an appearance of small white 'blocks' that appeared intermittently over some Census pages, meaning that parts of the page could not be read. I believe now that I may have found the reason for that. The 'blocks' only appeared when using the Firefox browser. I tried Using Google Chrome, and the 'blocks' did not appear, every page was clear, so hopefully, that problem is solved.

I did ring the County Record Office yesterday, and they were able to confirm my understanding of the Parish Boundaries, and which hamlets and townships would have comprised the Parish of Ashover until 1901.

Searching by Ecclesiastical Parish only seems to capture part of what I need in this particular instance, so I guess it is, in this instance, relying on a little local knowledge, and making sure that all the constituent parts are brought into the search. The long way round maybe, but it is accuracy I'm aiming at, so I guess that I will have to put up with it taking a little longer.

Many thanks for your interest. BTW, I will be sure to look out for any name variations in my search. So far, I have not seen any ARRAND's or HARRAND's, but I will bear your comments in mind.

Best wishes,

Alan

[tatewise]

Alan, I think the white blocks are a side effect of the way images are transmitted.
I imagine they are downloaded in rectangular sections, rather than as the entire page.
Then when highly zoomed, and panned sideways or up & down, only the required rectangular blocks need to be updated.

If one of the rectangular blocks is corrupted in transfer, then it is replaced by a white block.
Refreshing the display repeats the transfer and so probably renders the image correctly.

Why Firefox should be more susceptible than Chrome is a mystery.