AUTHORED BY RUSSELL JAMES (FROM ANCESTRY.CO.UK)
We’re pleased to announce that we’ve completed the first stage of our 1911 UK Census release. Any of our members can log in to the site right now, and browse the scanned record images from all over England, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
If you’ve already traced your tree up to 1901, this will obviously let you bring your research forward another decade. If you’re new to family history on the other hand, the 1911 UK Census is a great starting point.
Many of you will actually have met relatives who were recorded in it, so you’re likely to have some strong information to help your search. I’ve already found my great-grandfather, who I remember writing dirty limericks and drawing strange sketches of cats when I was a child. I can’t wait to show my mum his record.
This collection also offers some terrific advantages over its predecessors. It includes extra details such as how long couples had been married and how many children they’d had.
Even better, it’s the first census where we can provide you with the householder forms filled in by your ancestors – so you can see their original handwriting, and read any extra notes they may have made. Sadly, great-granddad Hill was too young to write his own entry, so I missed out on one of his naughty rhymes!
At present, it’s not possible to search the records as you would with previous censuses. We’ve already started work on the transcriptions that will make this possible, and we’re on track to have them all finished by the end of the year – we’ll continue to keep you updated on our progress on this blog.
In the meantime, you can browse the records by county and civil parish. So, to track down your family, you need to have an idea of where they were living.
If you can’t find this out from talking to parents or grandparents, there are two main ways of discovering it using our records, either through the 1911 UK Census Summary Books or the 1901 UK Census.