No 28 How to find Census Information - Ancestry.co.uk

I now come to the way of looking for census records, and numerous other records, through the internet. The most popular source, and the source that I use, is www.ancestry.co.uk. This is a subscription service and the current annual fee is about £70 to get access to UK records. For a higher fee you can get access to US and other records but I haven't tried this yet. From time to time you may be able to get a free membership for a limited period so that you try it out to see for yourself whether it's going to be worth paying the annual fee.

When you go to the site you get the opportunity to search for your ancestor. You can put in some brief very general information or you can put in more accurate information and clearly the more information you have the more probable it is that you can find the person for whom you're looking. You put in the first name and the surname and the birth date but you can put in a range for the birth date if you're not sure. For place of birth you select the country, Wales for all of my ancestors, the county of birth, mainly Caernarvonshire in my case, and then the parish or town within the county. If you know the place of residence you can fill this in but if you don't you can leave it blank. There is the opportunity to provide further details if you know them such as name of spouse or parents.

You submit your search and you get a list of people of that name for different census years and also Birth, Marriage and Death records unless you confine your search. I'll stick to Census records at this stage. When you see the name you think is the one you're looking for, you click on the "image" option and you then see a copy of the original census record. If it's the one you want you have the option of simply examining it or you can download it onto your computer. I've done this with many of my ancestors and all the images I've shown in previous blogs have been obtained from Ancestry.

Some of the original images are a bit faint and the advantage of having them on your PC is that you can use Adobe Photoshop or the equivalent to improve the image. You can crop it to get rid of the black surround and you can use the brightness/contrast facility to make the make the image more legible. Sometimes the writing is unclear and you can enlarge the image to get a better chance of deciphering difficult to read words. There are therefore huge advantages in being able to get the images onto your PC whether you are using a computer based system for filing your records or by printing them for a paper based record system.

You can also select a census year for England or Wales, then select a county which in my case would usually be Caernarvonshire, and you then have the option of selecting a Parish. You are then given the option of Enumerator Districts within the Parish and the number depends on the size of the parish. Penmachno had 3 Enumerator Districts whilst Llanbeblig Parish, which covers the town of Caernarfon, had 11 Enumerator Districts in 1901 plus one for the Caernarfon Union Workhouse. You can then start trawling though each district to see what you can find. This is the same principle as working your way through the fiches in the Archives but you are doing it from the comfort of your own home and at a time that is convenient to you.

Because I now make considerable use of the internet, it doesn't mean that I don't use the Archives. There are many other sources of information for which a visit to the Archives is essential. However, for someone who is a beginner I would strongly advise using the services of your local Archives office as you will find that they have very helpful and knowledgeable staff who will help you get started.