An exhibition to mark the bicentenary of Poet Laureate Lord Alfred Tennyson’s birth has opened at his former home, Farringford House, on the Isle of Wight. Tennyson moved into the house in 1853, remained there for the rest of his life, and immortalised it in a poem to his friend Rev F. D. Maurice.

During Tennyson’s 39-year tenure, islanders were treated to regular visits from notables ranging from politicians, painters, and authors, to scientists, and even royalty. Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Darwin, Lewis Carroll, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and the Queen of Hawaii were Tennyson guests at one time or other.

The 1861 census provides an early glimpse at Tennyson’s idyllic Isle of Wight home, where he was living with his wife and two sons. The other occupants – a tutor, gardener, page, nurse, cook, housemaid, parlour maid, and a kitchen maid – give some idea of the opulent lifestyle the family enjoyed (click the image to enlarge).

Farringford House on the 1861 census

On the 1891 census an 81-year-old Tennyson is described as a peer of the realm, and his one-year-old grandson, Lionel (a future England cricketer) is now part of the household.

Farringford House on the 1891 census

Lord Tennyson would die just a year later. A search of the findmypast.com records reveals he was a shareholder in the Great Western Railway, and we discover that his wife, Emily, and eldest son, Hallam, acted as executors.

Lord Tennyson on the Great Western Railway Shareholders index

Our last glimpse at Farringford House is on the 1911 census. Lord Hallam Tennyson (who has inherited his father’s title) is the head of the household. The other residents are his wife Lady Audrey Tennyson, and seven servants. In the years that followed Farringford House became a hotel, and still serves that purpose today.

Farringford House on the 1911 census

The ‘Tennyson at Farringford’ exhibition runs until 9 September at Farringford House.

This week it’s the turn of the actress Kim Cattrall to take part in Who do you Think you Are?. Though the actress is best known for her roles as Americans, she was actually born in Liverpool and raised in Canada.

The family’s journey to Canada can be found on findmypast.com’s Passenger Lists. Kim is seen at three months old travelling with her sister, Cherry, and her mother Shane (listed as Gladys on official documents) in November 1956.

Kim Cattrall on the Passenger Lists

Kim’s father Dennis had travelled several months earlier in April, when Shane was pregnant, so Kim was on her way to meet her father for the first time.

Kim Cattrall's father on the Passenger Lists

Kim’s family have remained close to their Liverpudlian roots and Kim has returned many times over the years. This time Kim is on a mission to solve the mystery surrounding her maternal grandfather George Baugh.

George married Kim’s Grandmother Marion Thomas in 1928. The event can be found in findmypast.com’s birth, marriage, and death indexes.

Kim Catrall's grandfather's marriage

However, George walked out on his wife and three daughters when Shane was eight – leaving the family in poverty – and was never heard from again. The only clues Kim has are a photograph and a newspaper article from the 1980s, which mentions her grandfather’s sister.

Shane and her sisters are desperate to know what happened to their father, but will they like what they find? Is Kim’s prediction that ‘I think it’s going to end in tears’ going to be right? Watch BBC One tonight at 9pm to find out.

Actor and comedian David Mitchell has always had a passion for the past. He studied history at Peterhouse, Cambridge and one of his earliest projects after graduating was a show about the First World War. This makes him a relatively well-placed subject for hit genealogy series, Who Do You Think You Are?, on which he appears tonight at 9pm on BBC One.

David already knew he had paternal Scottish ancestry, and that the Mitchells were wealthy sheep farmers. Part of his quest on tonight’s show is to discover whether they were involved in the notorious Highland Clearances: one of the darkest chapters in Scottish history.

During the Clearances, which took place in the nineteenth and late-eighteenth century, wealthy land owners cast tens of thousands of men, women and children from their homes, so they could use the land for more profitable large-scale sheep farming. Tenants who refused to leave saw their houses burnt to the ground and were removed by force, at the point of a musket or sword. They were pushed out towards the coast, where they lived in barren plots of land (or crofts), and were expected to sustain their communities by fishing. The result was widespread destitution and starvation, and ultimately the destruction of the Highland people and their culture.

Some of those affected sought a better life across the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. Details of their hopeful journeys towards strange new lands can be found in the earlier part of the official Passenger Lists. These late nineteenth-century migrants were the forebears of countless native citizens living in those countries today.

The Clearances, which occurred in several waves, are among the most contentious issues in Scottish history, and still divide opinion today. We’re eager to discover whether David Mitchell’s ancestors played a part, and we’ll be tuning in tonight to find out.

David’s Scottish ancestors

With the help of our sister-site ScotlandsPeople, we decided to do some pre-emptive research, and track down the Mitchells on the censuses.

David’s family owned the same farm, Ribigill in Tongue, Sutherland, for three generations. We found them living there on every available census (apart from in 1871, when they were living elsewhere). In 1901 the head of the household was William Mitchell, a widower living with four grown-up children and two servants:

If, like David, you have Scottish forebears, why not search for them online today?

We were saddened to hear of the death of the oldest surviving First World War veteran, 111 year-old Harry Patch. This follows the recent death of fellow war veteran Henry Allingham, 113, and leaves just one surviving British veteran of World War One; Claude Choules, 108.

As this event drifts further into the past, so too do the memories of these men, and of the horrors of this massive conflict. Harry Patch was a gunner in the Light Infantrymen who survived one of the bloodiest British offensives, the Third Battle of Ypres, while Henry was a mechanic in the Royal Naval Air Service who among other postings, was put to work on the Western Front neutralising the booby trapped bombs left by the Germans as they retreated.

For many years both men refused to talk about their experiences, preferring to shut out the traumatic memories. But in later life, when they did speak, both recalled the nightmarish conditions of the battlefield with their permanently waterlogged trenches (Allingham remembered working up to his armpits in water), the disease and plague of enormous rats, and the smell of death. After the war these men returned to their ordinary lives; Henry as a mechanic and Harry as a plumber.

There were 16 million deaths and 21 million casualties across the countries involved in WWI, and if you have ancestry that is British it is highly likely that a member of your extended family served in the conflict.

And perhaps what is so extraordinary about Henry and Harry is that their experiences, which pushed people to the limits of human endurance, were mirrored by millions of others involved in the fighting, including your ancestors.

Search for ancestors in the military records

Claude Choules in 1911

Britain’s last surviving Great War veteran, Claude Choules, is also the only living person, of any nationality, who has served in both World Wars. In 1911, three years before the start of the conflict, he was 10 years old and lived in Wyre, Pershore in Worcestershire. Here he is on the 1911 census with his father (a clerk to a market gardener), and his two elder brothers, who were labourers:

Search for First World War heroes on the 1911 census now

Popular travel and wildlife TV presenter Kate Humble knew little about her ancestors before she agreed to appear on Who Do You Think You Are?. And what she found was a colourful history with many surprises. Her paternal grandfather, Bill Humble, was a celebrated RAF pilot and her maternal grandfather was interned in the infamous Stalag Luft III during the Second World War.

But perhaps the biggest surprise and most moving story was that of great-great-great grandfather Joseph Humble, who worked for a colliery in Northumberland.

Kate was first alerted to Joseph Humble’s story through looking at the 1861 and 1871 censuses. On the 1861 census (below) he is listed as a ‘colliery viewer’ living alongside other mine workers in Northumberland.

Joseph Humble on the 1861 census.

But by the time of the 1871 census he had moved to Durham and was listed as a grocer and draper.

Joseph Humble on the 1871 census

There’s nothing unusual in this you might think, except that, as Kate found out he worked at the colliery at the time of the Hartley Colliery Disaster in January 1862. The event is still regarded as one of the worst mining accidents in England, and caused the death of over 200 miners.

We haven’t seen the programme yet, but our curiosity got the better of us and we did some research of our own. First stop was the Durham Mining Museum website where we found that that a ‘colliery viewer ‘is the person who gives directions as to the method of working and ventilating the mine’. In modern terms, he was the colliery manager.

Some research on the accident revealed that it was caused when a cast-iron beam for a steam engine (used to pump water from the mine) fell into the mine’s single shaft, killing several men instantly and blocking off the escape route and ventilation for the others who died of suffocation.

So as the person responsible for the workings of the mine, was Joseph Humble in some way responsible for the accident? Or was there another reason for his change in career?

Contemporary newspaper reports and local records state that Mr Humble, as the pit manager, was one of the first people to see the full horror of the disaster underground. He was said to have been deeply affected and is quoted as having said, ‘Oh, my men, my canny men, they would have done ought for me and there they are all lying dead and cold’.

Could the trauma of disaster have led him to give up his respected position in the community (incidentally, he was also an enumerator on the 1861 census) and change career? Like you, we’ll have to watch the programme (screened tonight at 9pm on BBC One) to find out…

Address searching often requires a degree of lateral thinking to get the best results. Here’s a few extra tips and also some new features on the horizon which aim to make your searching easier. The post below is based in replying to questions from a customer searching in Dorking, Surrey but the points apply equally to addresses across the country.

The source of address details on the census is that taken from the original form filled in by the householder (this contrasts with previous censuses, where the forms were compiled by the enumerator, thus introducing some level of standardisation in recording). Unfortunately, several factors conspire to make the historical document problematic for finding addresses using 1911 census returns. 

The first is that in 1911, the concept of a full postal address with a number and street was less evolved than it is today. Many houses simply carried names and householders would then place the town afterwards. To take an example, looking at modern-day Pixham Lane in Dorking, Surrey, the majority of the houses carried names but most householders simply included their postal address as “name of house, Dorking” and this is the information that we transcribe. Unfortunately this was compounded by the small space on the original form left for the address, meaning the householder would often abbreviate the address to make it fit. Have a look at an example of an Original Page to see how small the space was for your ancestors to enter their address. 

The second is that many householders used abbreviations for words (as we do today), such as “Rd” for “Road”. Again using an example of Lincon Road in Dorking (around the corner from Pixham Lane) if you search for “Lincoln” on its own in Dorking, Surrey all 44 properties are returned sequentially, some listed as “Lincoln Road” others as “Lincoln Rd”. Try searching for just the first part of the address and leaving off lanes, Roads, Crescents etc, but narrow the search area by county and district first.

We will be applying many data enhancements and standardisation processes over the coming months to compensate for these common inconsistencies in the originals and to make the data more easily searchable. However, the transcriptions are in this case accurate based on the original documents. To get the best out of any historical document, a degree of lateral thinking often has to be applied. 

Thirdly, place names and spellings change: in the case above, Pixham had an alternative spelling of “Pixholme” and 35 properties are found in Dorking under this listing. If you can find contemporary maps of the area you are searching, either online or in local libraries and archives, these can prove useful as the name today may be utterly different.

 Finally, with 8 million different sets of handwriting, deciphering becomes extremely difficult and what may appear to be transcription errors (and in some cases are) occur. Thus we found one property transcribed as “Pischolme”. However, when examining the householder’s writing, the awful way he had formed the X would lead any person to transcribe it this way.

 We are working on a number of ways to make searching by address simpler in face of the difficulties posed by the original records, but the unique nature of the 1911 census means these methods have had to be worked out afresh for this census, and the census is very much work in progress, although to date hundreds of thousands of researchers have successfully used the service to identify the records they want to view.

 As well as applying many enhancements to the data to attempt to smooth over the inconsistencies of our ancestors, we will also release the RG78 Enumerators Summary Books soon (current estimate is April), which list the households and heads in each area: this information is invaluable for identifying neighbouring houses when the address information left by our ancestors makes this hard to recover. If you have already paid to view a household image, you will be able to view the linked Enumerators images for free, by returning to your saved records. You will not be required to make further payment to view these.

We will also be adding a wildcard search to the street field to allow you to search laterally and many more data standardisations will be applied over the coming months.

We have released a number of new search features this morning - we hope you find them useful.

1. “Last Name” is no longer a compulsory field - you can search using “First Name” or “Census reference” instead
2. Up to 5,000 search results can now be viewed
3. Searches with up to 1,000 results are now displayed automatically, without the “gateway” screen being shown first
4. You can choose to enter a Census reference number instead of an address in Place Search (see the help file next to this field for further details)

We have turned on some more search features for you. Firstly, you can now use a ‘leading wildcard’ (i.e include a wildcard as the first letter of the name). This is helpful as the initial character of names is more liable to be mistranscribed.

Secondly, we have increased the range of dates that you can search: you can now search +/- 5 years on Date of Marriage and +/- 10 years on Date of Birth.

More goodies coming next week - keep your eyes peeled.

We are happy to tell you that we have now applied changes to the data on 1911 Census to allow you to search for variants for both first names and last names.

The variants search is essentially a large thesaurus that identifies common variants, mis-spellings and alternative spellings for many of the names within the census. This should be of great help in tracking down elusive ancestors that you have so far not been able to identify. 

Click on the “Show advanced fields” button to make use of this search feature.

Coming next: allow a wildcard as the first character, increase range of years available (currently set at a maximum of +/- 2 years).

Enjoy!

There have been a few questions on transcription accuracy and our policy towards certain aspects of transcribing the records. We hope this post clears up a few questions!

The transcription accuracy of the 1911census.co.uk website at launch is in excess of 98.5% according to recent tests - this threshold is set as a requirement by the National Archives.

Transcribing the census is a massive exercise - every single digitised document has to be read and transcribed and this process results in over 7 billion keystrokes over the course of the project. Naturally in this volume of keystrokes, more than a few errors will be made.

However, during the transcription process, we do apply a number of processes (developed during our many years’ experience of digitising censuses and other historical documents) to correct the most obvious errors and keep inaccuracy to a minimum.

The 1911census in particular poses specific problems - because the household summaries are the core documents rather than enumerators’ books, the variety of the handwriting itself is significantly wider - in fact there are 8 million different hands writing returns, making interpretation of the handwriting a much more challenging task!

Now some good news - the 98.5% accuracy at launch will improve over time.

The first way that it will be improved is by users of 1911census.co.uk reporting errors to us. Each report is reviewed by hand by the transcription team and if the change is approved, the change is incorporated into the search results, usually within a month (when the next data upload is made to the website).

Our policy is to accept changes only if they match what is on the original page (i.e the household form). So if your ancestor made spelling mistakes on the original page, they will be carried through into the transcript. This is actually more common than you might think, so please be sure to check the original page before you assume that there is an error, rather than an accurate transcription of the original document.

The second way that we improve the quality of the transcription over time is by applying ‘data standardisation’ processes. This is basically a set of rules we develop over time as we identify errors and apply to the data. A basic standardisation that we apply for example is converting “Geo” to “George” and listing records from Kent, Surrey and Middlesex as “London” if they fall within the metropolitan London area. We are developing and applying more data standardisations over time to eliminate more of the current transcription errors and to make searching easier, but some of these processes are much easier to apply once the data is complete.

All of our transcriptions undergo thorough batch sampling, by the transcription house, by The National Archives and by our in-house Quality Control team. Any batch failing to meet the required level of accuracy is rejected and rekeyed.

One way of reducing transcription errors is by ‘double-keying’ every entry - this basically means getting the transcriptions done twice (by different people) and then comparing the two versions and eliminating differences by hand. However, the cost of doing this naturally doubles the transcription cost, would not improve the accuracy rate by a hugely significant degree (you can never reach 100%), and the costs would have had to have been passed on to the public – resulting in higher prices for the census service.

We could also have taken the route of transcribing fewer fields – just a name index, like the old pre-digital booklets – but feel that this would have resulted in fewer people being able to find their ancestors as it would narrow the number of fields you can search on. It would also have made the transcription much less useful for academic study, which is one of the uses to which 1911 census will be put when it is completed.

It is important to remember that the transcription is designed as a finding aid for the original documents, which should be viewed as the “source of truth”; happily most users are able to find their ancestors despite the inevitable errors that creep in.

We have also provided very flexible search options (using wildcards, for example), which, with some lateral thinking, can also help you track down those who do not appear on the first search. The search options had to be constrained at launch to allow for the volumes of people searching, but we have been unlocking these features as the week has worn on, and there is more to come (see other blog posts).