Skip to main content

Burials and Censuses

To link with Deceased Online's forthcoming competition to win one of five copies of my new book, Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census (Pen & Sword, 2013), this week's post examines the use of burial records and censuses in family history research. 

Besides records of birth/baptism, marriage and death/burial, census records are some of the most commonly used in genealogy. Once you have found a burial record on the Deceased Online database, you may want to look further into the life of the deceased person. Using the details on the burial record alongside those in censuses will help to give you a more rounded picture of your ancestor and his or her life.

Most family historians use the Victorian and Edwardian censuses of 1841-1911. These were taken every ten years and have been digitized on a number of databases. The original records are held at The National Archives. The 1841 census was the first to name each individual (as opposed to just heads of household) and to record personal information across all areas. By 1911, these details included:
  • name and surname
  • relationship to head of the family
  • age
  • marital status (including number of years in current marriage and number of children born to that marriage)
  • occupation
  • birthplace
  • nationality
  • infirmity
National census taking began in 1801 but few records survive from the censuses of 1801, 1811, 1821 and 1831. What does exist may be found in local record offices or online.

Example of a Welsh census entry from 1891
Burial registers often contain clues that you can use to find your ancestor in surviving census records. These include:
  • name of the deceased - is this a married name or maiden names? Note how it is spelt. Has the name been changed?
  • address, abode or residence - some census websites can be searched by address. Make sure you note all relevant details.
  • age - use this to identify the person by their correct name on the census. Ages at burial may be incorrect. Many Victorians adjusted their ages to match that of a spouse, for example.
  • name of informant or graveholder - do you know how is this person connected to your ancestor? He/she could be a relative, neighbour or friend, but may also be an employer or the manager of an institution like the workhouse. Finding this person in the census could tell you more about your ancestor's life.
  • date - move backwards to the nearest census and begin with that. Gradually move farther back in time to explore your family's history.
The competition to win a copy of Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census will be launched on this blog shortly. To keep up to date with this and all our other news, do follow our Twitter and Facebook posts!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

London's Spa Fields

Deceased Online has just uploaded around 114,000 burial records from Spa Fields in the modern London borough of Islington Spa Fields today, with the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer in the background Spa Fields Burial Ground became notorious in the 19th century for its overcrowded and insanitary conditions. Located in the parish of St James, Clerkenwell, the grave yard was not far from the ever-increasing City of London. Spa Fields was known also as Clerkenwell Fields and Ducking-pond Fields in the late 18th century, hinting at a dark side to what was then a summer evening resort for north Londoners. What would become a cemetery was a ducking pond in the rural grounds of a Spa Fields public house. It was here in 1683 that six children were drowned while playing on the ice. In his History of Clerkenwell (1865) William J. Pinks wrote that visitors, "came hither to witness the rude sports that were in vogue a century ago, such as duck-hunting, prize-fighting, bull-baiting...
34 comments
Read more

New Maps Online for St Peter's Cemetery and Churchyard

New data for Scotland will be appearing on Deceased Online over the next couple of weeks. Here we give you an insight into our holdings on the cemeteries of Aberdeen. The ‘Granite City’, as Scotland's third largest city is known, features strongly in the Deceased Online database . You can search around 248,000 records from nine cemeteries and burial grounds, including St Nicholas Churchyard, Trinity Churchyard, Nigg Cemetery, John Knox Churchyard, St Peter's Cemetery - linked with Spital Churchyard, St Clement's Churchyard, Old Machar Churchyard, Grove Cemetery and Nellfield Cemetery. We have just added detailed grave location maps of Spitak (aka St Peter’s) Churchyard and St Peter’s Cemetery. Located in the north of the city, these two cemeteries form one vast graveyard. The Deceased Online database contains registers, which date from 1767, for over 160,000 burials. Besides the registers are the Dues Books. For the earliest dates these cover the date of burial...
4 comments
Read more

Wakefield Collection: Cremation Records now available on Deceased Online

Records for both crematoria in Wakefield, Yorkshire have been added to the Deceased Online database Above: Pontefract Crematorium The two sets of crematoria records have been added to Deceased Online 's Wakefield Collection .  Wakefield district contains nineteen cemeteries and two crematoria. Many of the records go back to the mid and late 19th century when the cemeteries opened, and range across a wide geographical area. The full list of  Wakefield  cemeteries live on Deceased Online,  with opening dates in brackets,   is as follows: 1.  Altofts Cemetery  – Church Road, Altofts, Normanton  (1878)   2.  Alverthorpe Cemetery  – St Paul’s Drive, Alverthorpe, Wakefield  (registers from 1955) 3. Castleford Cemetery  – Headfield Road, Castleford  (1857) 4.  Crigglestone Cemetery  – Standbridge Lane, Crigglestone, Wakefield  (1882) 5. Featherstone Cemetery  – Cutsyke Road, Nort...
11 comments
Read more