Why do i have so much trouble with FreeCen ?

[steve albin]

Hi Folks,

No matter how hard I try or how many variations I feed into FreeCen is all I get is a big fat nothing.

Even whith the info that the kind people on this site supply I still get zilch.

By now I was hoping that I would get at least 50% but still nothing......

Regards

Steve

[alcrighton]

Hi Steve,

Have you looked at the Database Coverage* for the county and the years that you've been searching?

* Link on left hand side of home page about half way down

It may just be that all the ancestors you've looked for happen to be in areas and years not transcribed yet.  I've been very lucky with FreeCen as I have ancestors that appear in the 1841 censuses for Cornwall and Angus (both 100% completely transcribed).

Regards,

Allan

[steve albin]

Hi Allan,

Thanks for your reply.

This info has been proven but still it comes up zero if I do the search.

This how I have set up the lower section of freecen.

Year....1851                                                           
Surname.....Mitchell
First name....Elizabeth
Marital Status...Married
Age or birth year...1811
age/Year range....5
Language...any
Cencus place....all places
Cencus counties....all counties
Birth place Woolwich
Birth county...all counties

Even after all that it does not help.

Cheers

Steve

[casalguidi]

Hi Steve

In 1851 she was in Kent and there is nothing yet on freecen for Kent

It is a volunteer project which started by inviting people to index the 1891 census.  It has grown from this with some counties having much better coverage than others at present.

It is complete for Cornwall in 1841 but the 1841 gives no birthplaces - only whether born in or out of the county of residence or Scotland, Ireland or Foreign so it's best not to give a place of birth for 1841 searches in this instance.

Search for MITCHELL (tick soundex box) Elizabeth in 1841 in Cornwall and it returns 133 matches for which you can view the transcriptions of the households - it is a bit slow to display results but it will get there - and bear in mind that ages for adults over 15 years of age were often rounded down to the nearest 5 years in the 1841 census.

Good luck

Casalguidi

[steve albin]

Hi Casalguidi,

No matter how hard I try I still cannot get anything that looks like a 1841 cencus result in Cornwall.

The FreeCen takes me straight into Ancestory.Com and even when I put in cencus,1841 Cornwall is all I get is BDM results.

I give up

Thanks for your help.

Cheers

Steve

[casalguidi]

They carry an advert for ancestry but I don't understand how the search would take you there

http://freecen.rootsweb.com/cgi/search.pl

If a blue search box comes up at the top of the screen - ignore it because that's the advert to take you to ancestry.  Use the search boxes down the left hand side ie. year, surname etc..

Casalguidi

[nettle]

Hi,

I thought I would tag onto this subject as I too have found Freecen particularly frustrating.

As an example I am looking for names in Aberdeenshire in 1841 where the database coverage is complete. However, what i want to do is look up all the entries with a common surname but without entering a first name. Why does it take forever, trying to do this and then fail anyway! Even if done over a smaller area it still fails. If however, i put in a first name then it works OK and if it doesn't find an entry it says so!

It seems a real shame that such a basic type of search cannot be completed - it would be a great site otherwise!

Keith.

[daveanpat]

Hi

        on the subject of 1841 census for cornwall try Pickards Pink Pages www.hunimex.com/warwick/index.html

I found a lot of my wifes family


 good luck david

Moderator comment:  URL modifified

[daveanpat]

hi

 sorry add    .html    to that address      oops!


david