House Address not on 1901 census

[ptjw]

I have been tracing my wifes ancestors and tried a search on the 1901 census. It showed no trace for the five members I know were alive in 1901 it even shows the house not to be there. How do I go about checking the original census returns to see if the online is at fault!

[Geoffers]

I have been tracing my wifes ancestors and tried a search on the 1901 census. It showed no trace for the five members I know were alive in 1901 it even shows the house not to be there. How do I go about checking the original census returns to see if the online is at fault!
First point about houses is that they are sometimes re-numbered between the date of your inforamtion and the date of the source you are using. How long before the actual census do you have a specific address for the family?

The census is online and also available on fiches at the FRC and local County Record Offices. You can purchase copies of the 1901 census on fiches from TNA.

When you search the online census, bear in mind that the indexer may have had problems reading the name and possibly transcribed it incorrectly. You do sometimes need quite wide lateral thingking to locate families. I always suggest carrying out the broadest posible searches and narrowing things down from there. Maybe search on just surname, gender and county of either birth or residence. Don't forget to try abbreviations of the county name (e..g Norfolk, Norfk, Nfk - etc). For surnames search using variant spellings.

Could your wife's maternal ancestor have married twice and when she married a second time, her family just used the new surname with which you are familiar? Could you let us know some more detail? - other suggestions may then come to mind.

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

[Rod Neep]

I have been tracing my wifes ancestors and tried a search on the 1901 census. It showed no trace for the five members I know were alive in 1901 it even shows the house not to be there. How do I go about checking the original census returns to see if the online is at fault!What you are really saying is that they do not appear on the index of the 1901 census on the National Archices (PRO) site. That is hugely different from "they are not on the census". There are rather a lot of instances like that. A huge number in fact.

What you need is access to the original pages of the census enumerators' books, to look through, page by page. These are becoming available on the Ancestry site (but that is not especially condusive to paging though to read, as the process is extremely slow), or on CD from various publishers who have the rights to reproduce them. A third alternative is to view them on film/fiche at a record office, which is free..... but still very time consuming.

CDs, if you can get them, enable you to do it at home. By far the best alternative.
Regards
Rod

[Lindad]

I have been tracing my wifes ancestors and tried a search on the 1901 census. It showed no trace for the five members I know were alive in 1901 it even shows the house not to be there. How do I go about checking the original census returns to see if the online is at fault!

If you let me know the names of the people you are looking for and the address of where you thought they would be, I'd be happy to have a look on Ancestry...

[ptjw]

27 Radnor Street, Finsbury
Name of Rowson - should be five person living there, 3 children louise,walter and alfred. Louise birth cert shows her born at 27 Radnor Street.

[Linda Bailey]

Hi
it even shows the house not to be there

Well I have found the house on the 1901 census - by doing an Address search on Radnor Street and using the the advanced place names - putting in East Finsbury for the Parlimentary division.

And then I get the following:
27 Radnor Street Y London St Luke Middlesex(Civil Parish) St Clements City Rd (Ecclesiastical Parish) East Finsbury (parlimentary borough) Finsbury (Municipal borough) No 3 (Municipal Ward).

However no matter what search I have used I have been unable to find the children. Please put me out of my misery and tell me what they are indexed under.:)

Sorry I haven't been of much help.

Linda

[ptjw]

Thanks for that - it appears you get different results if you put Radnor St than if you put radnor street. I will look up the results tonight when I get home!

[Peter Goodey]

Thanks for that - it appears you get different results if you put Radnor St than if you put radnor street. I will look up the results tonight when I get home!
In general it's a good idea to enter as little detail as you can get away with. Just "Radnor" might have been OK in this case, otherwise "Radnor St*". There are irritating restrictions on the use of wild cards but they are very useful at times.

[ptjw]

Loaded the page for Radnor street nad the rowsons were not there - Anyone any ideas as to what I can try now! They eventually ended up in edmonton area of london but we do not know when that was. It is luck that we have progressed back to 1808 so the information is not that critical but it has infuriated me by the fact that the 1901 census is not complete and so would give the wrong leads!

[Linda Bailey]

Loaded the page for Radnor street nad the rowsons were not there - Anyone any ideas as to what I can try now!

What are the ages and names (including middle names) of all the people that you are expecting to be in the house?

Not that I will find them I expect - but I enjoyed trying to find them ;)

Linda