Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 114

The first mention of censuses is familiar to many from the Christmas story. Sadly, Caesar’s census will not help many modern family historians, but more recent ones will. Those for 19th-century Britain can provide ages and places of birth, essential information for seeking births and so identifying earlier generations.

Censuses are now available online. This is a page from http://www.1901censusonline.com.

Census returns used to be regarded as the second port-of-call after General Registration records. Now, with them all online from 1841 to 1901, they can often represent the first and easiest way of tracing a family tree back through the 19th century.

From 1851 to 1901, census returns provide ancestors’ names, relationships to others in the same household, ages and places of birth. With good fortune, you may be able to find your grandparent or great-grandparent with their parents in the 1901 census, then seek the same family in the preceding censuses. At that point (and with good fortune still attending), you will find the names of your forbears who were born in the early 19th or even late 18th centuries, whose baptisms can be sought in parish registers.

Do not attempt to perform these genealogical gymnastics using censuses in isolation. To be sure you have traced the right line, you absolutely must use General Registration records as well. Both categories of records complement each other to help you build up incredibly detailed pictures of your ancestors’ lives. Used together, they can enable you trace a fully proven family tree back to the early 19th century.