I regret to inform you that Egg-merchant and Dealers, Lunatic Keepers, Bee Dealers, Ice Dealers and Well-Sinkers have sadly disappeared from Britain!
Some interesting findings have been released by Ancestry.co.uk regarding professions that can be traced in the 1841 census, or soon after, that were then compared with current UK employment data in the 2010 Labour Force Survey.
According to Ancestry.co.uk, whose site is one of several that hosts a UK Census Collection:
“ ‘Teacher’ is the occupation that has grown the most in popularity, with the number of teachers employed increasing by an enormous 131,000 per cent between 1841 and 2010 – in real numbers from 1,105 to 1,449,000.
Next are journalists, increasing by 42,000 per cent (520 people to 217,000) between 1841 and 1901, while the number of builders has increased by 9,000 per cent (9,188 people to 821,000).
Other professions that have also grown in popularity range from high flying stockbrokers, dentists, accountants, medical professionals and solicitors to the more modest builders and hairdressers. Even the much maligned estate agents have shot up in number by 748 per cent since the 1840s.”
Do you remember when, as a child, we would say “When I grow up I want to be a…” and we would name a job or profession we fancied?
So, do you think that these statistics show us that not enough children hankered after being a Bee Dealer, an Ice Dealer, an Egg Merchant? And can we also assume that many probably said “I’m going to be anything but a Lunatic Keeper”?
I wonder what people will have put down, as an occupation in the recent census, that in a hundred and seventy years will have disappeared from Britain in 2181?
ScotlandsPeople website has announced that the 1911 census will be available by 11:00 BST on Tuesday 5 April. Images of the enumeration books will be in full colour and for the first time the enumeration includes the particulars of the marriage, the number of children born from the marriage, the industry or service connected to the occupation and the nationality of the person enumerated.
This will mean that we will be able to search all of the United Kingdom for ancestors in the 1911 census records, as Scotland joins those from England & Wales, the Channel Isles and the Isle of Man for the first time.
ScotlandsPeople are also planning to make some scanned historic documents available at their website: www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk, for example PDF’s of the street index books for the main towns and cities of Scotland, which will show whether a street existed in 1911.
Jersey Family History Forum at the WDYTYA? Live show 2011
I had to be up, showered and breakfasted for 6 am, in order to make my way to Jersey airport and the 7 am “red-eye†to London Gatwick. The fact that I, not in any way a morning person, was prepared to do this stems from the timetable of workshops that I had seen for the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE show at Olympia.
First on, in the Society of Genealogist’s Regional theatre was “Researching Your Family History in Jersey†given by Sue Payn and James McLaren and I really wanted to be there for the workshop. My bus to the airport, the flight to London and the coach transfer to central London all ran reasonably to schedule and so I was in the building by 10.15. and taking a seat in time for the presentation.
James’ began by clearing up the perennial misunderstanding by people from outside of the island, regarding Jersey’s constitutional position. As a Jersey born and educated person, myself, I have spent most of my life making similar statements to his and so a smile warmed my face as the familiar words rang out.
I am often heard saying that we are not part of England and Wales, nor are we part of Great Britain, nor the United Kingdom and we are not in the EU, but are British Islands.
As James said: “We are a Crown Dependency: we owe allegiance to the British crown, but in most other respects we are self-governing. We have our own legal system, large parts of which are quite different from English law. In this respect we are similar to Guernsey, but please understand that we are not the same! It’s like the difference between a Mercedes-Benz and an Austin Allegro – the principle is the same, a vehicle that gets you from A to B, but the detailed implementation is rather different.â€
This brought another smile to my lips as the old rivalry, with our sister Bailiwick of Guernsey, was introduced to the good folk in the workshop. Both Bailiwicks trace a Norman heritage and when in 1204 King John lost his French possessions, the Channel Islands kept allegiance to the British Crown.
One of the first things you are going to find, if you are researching your ancestors from Jersey is that the records are invariably going to be in French, as this was the official language of this island until very recently when English has become dominant. James pointed out that Jersey was very largely French or Jerriais-speaking until the middle of the 19th century, and so a lot of legal records long after that were kept in French. The deeds to my house, for example.
I have often heard people in the island refer to these documents being written in “proper French†to distinguish the language used from Jerriais, the name given to the Jersey French patois spoken in the island, which even comes with variations in pronunciation across the 45 square miles of the island!
Jersey people have always travelled far from their island; some to settle away in places such as Canada, Australia and of course to the United Kingdom. Some stay and some return. As James said the reason Jersey folk travelled was “– partly because of our rules on inheritance, partly because there was money to be made in trade, partly to serve Queen and country in the armed forces, and more recently because the only way to get higher education was to go to the big island to the north of us. Consequently there are numerous people in the UK who have Jersey ancestry somewhere in their past.â€
I shall be returning to the subject of Jersey Ancestors and have more from James McLaren from the Channel Islands Family History Society in another post on this site shortly.
Family historians will find out by watching my interview with Dan, where this important family tree research site will be heading in the next few months and it seems that Ancestry’s focus will be on continuing the development of parish records on ancestry.co.uk that they had started with London and the registers from LMA and also bringing us more occupational records.
The interview is just one of a number recorded at the UK’s largest family history show: Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE at London’s Olympia. The event is a fantastic mix of workshops, exhibitors and more for those of us passionate about family tree research.
To watch the other videos navigate to the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE 2011 button on the bar above, or simply watch at my YouTube channel: www.YouTube.com/NoseyGenealogist
Are you having trouble finding birth records for family members who have very common names? Have you tried to figure out which ones belong to you and which don’t using the census data but just can’t be sure you have the right people?
Often, when you can’t find records for a person, it can pay to take a step
back and sort of zoom out from concentrating on the one we can’t find.
By this I am suggesting that you take a look at that person’s siblings, if they
have any of course, and identify where theses other children of the parents of your difficult forebear were born. Once you have done this, you may be able to then trace the parents back.
It is worth looking at the census records for the streets around where your ancestor lived as sometimes families occupied houses quite near to each other. Sometimes they can even be living in the same road. Maybe clues can be had from investigating these parallel lines to your direct branch in the family tree.
It could be that you will need to go and search the Parish Registers in the County Record Office, for where your ancestor came from, to see if there are any leads to be had by looking at the microfilmed copies of the parish church records.
I have found that many of my ancestors were simply called John Thorn, which is pretty common in Devon!
I was in luck getting back one generation because my 3 x great-grandfather at least had a middle name of Branton. On doing some delving I found out that this was in fact his mother’s maiden name so I could find his parent’s marriage.
But John Branton Thorn’s father was simply called John Thorn (with no middle name) and he married Sarah Branton in a city centre church in Plymouth. The records that I have seen of the Parish register do not say that he was “of that parish” and indeed omit to say from which parish he was from at all!
I have had to put him on the back burner and concentrate on other lines in my tree, until I can find the time to go to Plymouth and check the primary source of-line records in the Record Office, such as the Bishop’s Transcripts etc.
Good luck in your research into ancestors with common names.
Those family historians, who are researching their family trees back before the start of the census collections in North America, will be aware that they have to find some alternative records sets to find their ancestors. So what suggestions can we make?
Luckily I was reading up on this subject in last month’s Your Family Tree Magazine.. Issue 96 November 2010.
The article points out that first nominal census took place in 1850 in the USA and 1851 in Canada and so for those of you trying to find ancestors from before these census took place, then the best option available to you is to use the tax records.
What you are quickly going to find is that mostly only adult males are going to be listed in these records. Questions to consider are what age did a person have to be to be included in the poll tax and also what type of property were subject to tax? Best advice is to check out the relevant government regulations so that you can interpret accurately what the data is revealing.
Regretfully there are very few records of these taxes online, but Cyndi’s list is a good place to find links when they exist. www.cyndislist.com
Here you should find links to Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
Have you ever wondered how a website like findmypast.co.uk goes about scanning the information for us family historians to use before they put up online?
I mean what do they have to do to actually extract all that information from the government documents so that eventually we can go online and type in our search criteria and then get to see the results?
I watched this film and was fascinated by the facts…
There are 18 million pages of the 1911 census of England & Wales.
36 million people made up the population then, just before the First World War.
10 times the number of images than the 1901 census.
A team of 350 people worked on the transcriptions.
7 billion keystrokes were made by the transcribers!
2 Kilometres of shelving housed the 1911 census before the process of scanning started.
Watch it here.
Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate of findmypast.co.uk
I see that the final missing pieces of the 1901 census have been added to the family history website: findmypast.co.uk
Their press release from yesterday, 1 July 2010, says:
“We’ve unearthed the last 18,427 missing pieces of the 1901 census which means that it’s now complete on findmypast.co.uk”
This is great news if previously you could’t find an ancestor in that census. The details of which new records you can now find on their website are as follows:
I see that some important changes that have taken place on Genes Reunited over the last few weeks. Â They have added another two key record sets namely: the 1911 and the 1881 census. The 1911 census is the most recent census set to be released and provides in depth details including the following:
Your ancestor’s names and addresses
How long they have been married
How many children they have had
How many rooms there were in their house
Some other records that they’ve added include the overseas and military birth, marriage and death records. This is good for those of us that use this website as we are now able to discover information regarding the births, marriages and deaths of British relations that have taken place abroad since the late 18th century on this site.
See  for your self at: Genes Reunited.Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate.
The censuses can baffle people beginning family history, when they first encounter them. You go on to a commercial site and pay to download the image of your long lost ancestors and you are presented with an official form covered in sometimes difficult to read handwriting and what looks like lots of lines crossing out some of the data.
Lets start at the top!
The Header.
The Header contains the Location. That is broken down into sub sections, for example: the administrative county; the civil parish, etc. Boundaries were constantly changing and although it may appear that your ancestor has moved between the census, it could just have been a change in administrative division that had taken place. Also beware of house number changes or street name changes. I had one in my tree where 2 Densham Terrace, was 80 North Road and is now 199 North West Road, Plymouth!
Schedule Numbers.
The column on the far left of the document is the Schedule Number and NOT the house number! With the exception of the 1911 census, what we are looking at, when we download a census, is a page from the Enumerator’s book. The far left column, then, lists the number of the original schedule filled in by the head of the household. These schedules are not available any more with the exception of the 1911, which is why you can get to see the handwriting of the person that filled it in!
Names.
Beware that ancestors can vary their names across census! My Great Aunt Winnie appears as Eveline Winnifred and Winnifred Eveline on different census. A middle name may make an appearance after the death of a mother and if someone was know by a pet name, like one of my grandmothers, then this may be put down instead of her actual name. One more thing, north of the border it was usual for Scottish widows to revert to their maiden names.
Professions.
We all like to exaggerate a bit and so did our ancestors. A carpenter may become a Cabinet Maker or a merchant seaman a master mariner. Another thing to think about is where your ancestor had two or more jobs. Which went down on the schedule?
Place of Birth.
This could change depending on your ancestor actually knowing it. But also consider when a county changed its name or its boundaries moved, your ancestor’s place of birth has just changed.
If Deaf and Dumb; Blind, Lunatic, Imbecile or Feeble Minded.
Don’t fear the worst as this covers a variety of medical conditions with little option for degree of ailment. The options offered are a bit stark to the modern politically correct twenty-first century dweller.
Double strokes.
As you scroll down the page you will notice someone has inserted two parallel lines next to the names of some people. What does this mean? This indicates where the next household starts. So between the first // and the second all those names are considered to be part of the same household.
So, the downloadable census collections are a great tool for the family historian, providing us with fantastic insight into our departed family, but the information has the ability to confuse as well as to inform.
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