A posting seen on one of the family history mailing lists.

Jenny writes: Dear list, I have just bought the 1841 census for Essex on CDs, and though it came with a warning that some pages were illegible, I crossed my fingers that they wouldn't be the very ones that I needed.

Alas, some of the pages for Great Coggeshall are virtually blank. Does anyone know if any older microfilms or fiches (or transcripts) exist, where these pages might still be legible?

Of course, Jenny was not referring to an 1841 census on CD from Parish Chest.

The 1841 census is hard to scan. It is hard to read! But the sample above shows that it is not impossible to produce very good and readable scanned images from the census films.

As a result of seeing that posting on the family history mailing list, we tried to find the worst page from that Essex film. Here is a part of the scan of that page, reproduced at actual scan size (the size that Archive CD Books use on their CDs - so you can zoom in to read the really difficult ones in detail. Normally you wouldn't need to view it at this size).



This is the worst one that we could find. (HO107/335 /7  folio 5 pages 3& 4).
Can you read it? Compare it with others that you have seen.

Where would you purchase your 1841 census CDs from?

If you would like a preview of the results, two full pages from the Essex 1841 census, (one normal HO107/335/5 folio 35 page 23/24), one which is poor (HO107/335/7 folio 5 page 3/4), the full pages as the images above, to compare them with any other scanning system then :

• Right click on the link below to download the file
• From the drop down menu, select "Save Target As...."
• Select a place on your hard disk to download the file.
• Then when the download is complete, simply view the file 1841ess1.pdf using Adobe Reader in the normal way. 

Download the Essex 1941 Census

Find more Census Data on Parish Chest