How To Search The Census When You Can’t Find An Ancestor

It is not always possible to find an ancestor by surname search but you can search by Christian name, location, place of birth, age, etc.

For the purpose of this exercise we are going to use Ancestry.co.uk. (Please note that the following example is a random selection of research I have recently carried out on behalf of a client, Nicole Sheard.)

I was trying to locate a family by the name of Warhurst in the 1841 Census in Cheshire. I tried searching for one particular member of the family but the one shown below is the wrong person. I tried again and chose to search using Soundex but still got the same result.



I altered my search criteria, took out the surname of my subject but added place and estimated date of birth.



This search came up with 484 possible candidates to check through, so I decided that, as the surname began with W, I would start at the last page and work forward. It worked, and on the penultimate page I found the Catherine I was looking for transcribed as Catherine Whartursh.



So, as you can see, there is great flexibility when searching for that elusive ancestor. I have searched many times using the above method and have had a great deal of success.

There is another way I could have located Catherine Warhurst. I knew from previous Census records that she came from Mottram in Longden Dale and had I not been successful finding her, I would have chosen this next method. I did not choose this method originally as it can be quite time consuming.

From the home page in Ancestry.co.uk I selected the 1841 Census for England.











If I had an address, I could look at the descriptions of the enumeration districts. Failing that I could search through each district, but upon closer inspection District 1 and 2 were for Hattersley which didn’t mean anything to me, but District 3 was headed Mottram in Longdale. Luckily, I found my Warhurst in District 4.

Estimating Death Search Years Post-1901

There is another way to help estimate a death during the 20th century. We are currently concentrating on creating a four- or five-generation pedigree tree, but you naturally collect other family names from the Census as you go. Let’s go back to the 1901 Census for Martino and family:



In 1901, Martino and Amy had seven children living with them. It would be safe to assume that some if not all went on to marry at some stage during the early part of the 20th century. Their marriage certificates will provide information as to whether Martino was still living at the time of their marriage. I sourced marriage certificates for Amy Marelli in 1921, which recorded that Martino was still living and working as a restaurant proprietor.

Other marriages gave me further clues. William Marelli in 1924, Kathleen Marelli in 1925, Philomena Marelli in 1926, Winifred Marelli in 1931 and Henry Marelli in 1932, all recorded Martino as still living at the time of their marriages. Previously without this information, I had to search from 1911 to 1940 to find the death details for Martino, but with the clues provided by the marriages of his children, my search years shrink to 1932–1940.