Free Access this weekend on Ancestry 28th-31st August

[coombs]

I already have UK and Irish sub to Anc. But I wait with bated breath for another free access weekend to immigration records or Aus, NZ or US Canada records due to the several ancestor siblings and cousins who emigrated.

Even now sometimes with census indexed online, I still do it the old fashioned way to find someone who may be hiding. Scroll through the village returns sheet by sheet. Do it the long way, it can help.

[StanleysChesterton]

I've just found my G-grandparents.  It was an academic exercise as I knew that they weren't anywhere else.  His family in the village 100+ years, she'd married him there, they lived there (other evidence in the newspapers etc etc) ....so I knew they were there, I just had to stop looking for "them" and start looking at mistranscriptions etc.

And there they were.  As plain and clear as day, 100% absolutely them ....but the enumerator had re-written their names entirely wrongly.  Both had been given a new name (only the initial was correct) and he'd misspelt the surname by a bit.

So I found them on the street I expected, in the village I expected. 

It's nice to have that jigsaw piece, even if I didn't need it to progress.

[Braindead]

Even now sometimes with census indexed online, I still do it the old fashioned way to find someone who may be hiding. Scroll through the village returns sheet by sheet. Do it the long way, it can help.

There is a lot to be said for doing it the old fashioned way. I have had several instances where a family was started towards the bottom of one page and carried over to the next and the "carried over" part of the family has been missed out of the transscription. I have also come across a similar issue where the pages in the census return have been photographed in the wrong order i.g. the images go from page 59 to 61 with p60 at a different point in the set. When that happened I checked the originals on both ancestry and FindMyPast and the same images were used in both cases.

[coombs]

Even now sometimes with census indexed online, I still do it the old fashioned way to find someone who may be hiding. Scroll through the village returns sheet by sheet. Do it the long way, it can help.

There is a lot to be said for doing it the old fashioned way. I have had several instances where a family was started towards the bottom of one page and carried over to the next and the "carried over" part of the family has been missed out of the transscription. I have also come across a similar issue where the pages in the census return have been photographed in the wrong order i.g. the images go from page 59 to 61 with p60 at a different point in the set. When that happened I checked the originals on both ancestry and FindMyPast and the same images were used in both cases.

Better to be thorough. My ancestor William Taylor is in Canewdon, Essex in 1851 to 1871, his wife dies in 1871 and he is in Canewdon in 1885 on the electoral rolls as William Taylor Snr as he had a son with the same name. But he is nowhere to be seen in 1881 and I have trawled through the census pages for Canewdon 1881 a few times. He may have missed the census.

They may be in the census but in disguise.

[bugbear]

Even now sometimes with census indexed online, I still do it the old fashioned way to find someone who may be hiding. Scroll through the village returns sheet by sheet. Do it the long way, it can help.

There is a lot to be said for doing it the old fashioned way.

It's good when you have a location you're sure of, but when your ancestors are mobile, you simply can't "just read" the entire nation!

I recently did some research where a guy from Diss was living just outside Ipswich,  but only for 1 decade. I'd never have found him, the old fashioned way.

It's similar to doing a single name study in a PR. It's thorough (deep) but narrow.

 BugBear

[bugbear]

I've just found my G-grandparents.  It was an academic exercise as I knew that they weren't anywhere else.  His family in the village 100+ years, she'd married him there, they lived there (other evidence in the newspapers etc etc) ....so I knew they were there, I just had to stop looking for "them" and start looking at mistranscriptions etc.

Given Ancestry's excellent search facilities, when the "obvious" searches fail, I always suspect mistranscription of the surname.

A useful technique is to search for the "family", by searching for a particular combination of christian names, with the most distinctive christian name as the "home" person.

This is easy, since ancestry supports searching for the spouse, mother, father or child of your central target.

Christian names in combination can be just a selective as surnames, and are less prone to mispelling.

  BugBear (who currently has a FindMyPast sub, and HATES the search facilities)

[StanleysChesterton]

3 hours I just spent on Ancestry ..... 3 hours ..... "just" to find somebody that I know exists and where they exist. 

A mother + 5 children, in one parish, in the 1841 Census.  Easy to find on familysearch - there it is, just by keying in the name.  Job's a good 'un as they say.  I had the familysearch page/results loaded, to give me my starter clues.... and still it's taken all evening.

Could I find it in Ancestry??? Could I heck as like.  Ended up going through over 40 pages, name by name to find it.  So, what was so hard?  Complete mistranscription! 

A surname of 7 letters long, they got all four consonants (including the first letter) wrong - they only got the vowels right.  If I'd been "looking for them" instead of just wanting a little screenie of that section, I'd have never found them in a month of Sundays.  They hadn't even got any of the first names right for any of the kids either!

[StanleysChesterton]

Given Ancestry's excellent search facilities, when the "obvious" searches fail, I always suspect mistranscription of the surname.

I hate Ancestry's search/results.  It's really not working the way I work at all ... best way I've found is to find everything elsewhere first, from the other sites then try to find things on Ancestry.

A useful technique is to search for the "family", by searching for a particular combination of christian names, with the most distinctive christian name as the "home" person.

This is easy, since ancestry supports searching for the spouse, mother, father or child of your central target.

Christian names in combination can be just a selective as surnames, and are less prone to mispelling.

  BugBear (who currently has a FindMyPast sub, and HATES the search facilities)

It doesn't work if you're searching for: David, Patricia and Susan .... and when you finally find the record they've transcribed it as Pavit, Rutilia and Wan.

[Rosinish]

SC,

I'm in kinks     

You need to write & ask them which language it's been transcribed in   

Annie