BRITISH CENSUS ON THE INTERNET
By Rebecca Richards
What are some websites where we can find the British Census?
Go to the home page for the Vernal Family History Center-www.vernalfhc.org
choose class notes on the left hand side. You can find the notes for this class and use the links to find these websites. Then bookmark them on your home computer to make them easier to find again.
At this site, you can either search by county or by subject. If you know which county your family lived in you may want to see what is available for that county.
For example: if you choose Staffordshire from the drop down list on the left side where it says “select a county” and then click on county, we are given a list of links. Some of these are pay sites others are free. Take time to check what each of them offers.
Origins – www.originsnetwork.com is a pay site either for a 72 hr period or by the month or year. If you have several specific searches to do you can get organized and get a lot done in 72 hours. As an estimate, plan on $2.00 US for each pound.
Some of the links on the county sites will be name specific or location specific but you might find something helpful.
I will discuss FREECEN last.
The 1901 census site – www.1901census.nationalarchives.gov.uk has a free index and you might find enough info to justify buying the minimum numbers of units which are good for 7 days. You would need to have a lot of names to search in this amount of time not to lose any money. I couldn't see how many credits each page cost.
GENUKI-www.genuki.org.uk
This site is also set up by county. To start click on the map of England. Then on which ever country you want to search. On the next page, choose a county. You will see a list of topics, choose census. Click on the one entry and then you will have to choose a census year and see what is available.
The site I use the most is www.findmypast.com. It has census searches, birth marriage and death indexes, passenger lists, military, occupations and others. This is not necessarily the best site but it is one I have used for a couple of years now. It is a pay per view site. You can start for as little as $10.00. You will need to see which of these sites works best for you. The credits at this site are good longer than 7 days. The basic amount is good for 90 days, the more you buy at a time, the less they cost and the longer they are good for. You can also purchase a subscription at this site.
Ancestry-www.ancestry.co.uk
You might as well skip all the US stuff if you want British census. If you click on subscribe you will see that you can do pay for view or subscribe to just parts of the site.
They are supposed to have a free 14 day offer. Try going through another website to see the free offer.
Now for freecen – www.freecen.org.uk
The coverage now is mostly early years in Scotland and later years in England. On the web site, go to the statistics link to see which counties in which years have how much finished. This would be a good site to volunteer for especially if you have a lot of British research to do.
Scroll down to near the bottom of the page to do the actual search. The search box looks a lot like freebmd's. This is because they are both sponsored by rootsweb. Right now the actual image is not available but you can make a note of the Folio and Page and Schedule details to either access the actual image later or to find the image on a microfilm.
Just a note. Remember the days without the Internet and doing family history? Don't be afraid to spend a little money to encourage more information being made available. I think the price is small compared to the time it saves. It is much cheaper than a trip to England!!