We’re very excited to tell you that we have started unlocking the search features.

You can now search using wildcards, or using the “name starting with” feature. To try these out, go to “Search” and click on the “Show advanced fields” button at the bottom.

Both these features will give you a lot more flexibility. For example, I just searched for all footballers in England starting with S.

Wildcards are very useful if you are unsure of a spelling - you can substitute any or all of the parts of a name with a “*”. Searching for “R*B*T*S*” would give you a huge number of variants including Roberts,  Robertson, Rabbits, Reblatts and more. “AN*T*” will find Anthony, Annette, Antony, Anita and many more variations.

N.B You cannot search using a wildcard as the first character yet, but we will switch this on soon. Keep an eye on this blog for updates.

Coming soon - a variants search: this finds variants of first names and surnames. A variant search for Elizabeth would find you Liz, Eliza, Liza, Betty, Betsy, Beth and more

For more on search features, read this earlier post: http://blog.1911census.co.uk/2009/01/extra-search-features-coming-after-launch/

A few people have been having difficulty finding ancestors using the address search. Here are some tips to improve your chances of success!

The address search uses data from the RG14 (Household) schedules rather than the RG78 (Enumerators Summary Books). This means that the data being searched is what your ancestors would have written on the form rather than what the enumerator would have written. Because an enumerator would have been more likely to give a single, standard name to a particular street, there will be more variations in what the householders in a road have put on their form.

For example, the road near where I used to live is called “Clapham Manor Street”. Householders in this street have used various permutations such as Manor St, Manor Street, Clapham Manor, Clapham Manor St, Clapham Manor Street and more (including misspellings on the original household page itself).

We are using intelligent filtering to clean up the more obvious variations such as “Rd” for Road and “St” for Street but obviously, some lateral thinking may be required with these records. Here’s a few tips.

1. The wildcard search will be available soon (next few weeks). This will allow you to search for variants within a district (in my example, perhaps “*manor*” within the registration district to find all roads with ‘manor’ in the name in that area.

2. The RG78 Enumarator Summary Book images will also be available soon. These will let you find a family nearby, then look at the street summary to identify their neighbours (hopefully including your elusive ancestors). They will also give you fascinating details about the area your ancestors lived in.

Hope that helps!

We have temporarily restricted the search facilities available at launch to allow a greater number of searches to take place at the same time. As soon as we can, we will ‘unlock’ the search feature to allow you to search much more flexibly and find those elusive ancestors. Here are the main features to be unlocked.

1. You will be able to perform a person search without the need for a surname, allowing you to find ancestors where you are unsure of the surname or to perform broader searches (finding all tram drivers within Manchester for example)
2. You will be able to perform ‘wildcard’ searches. This is where you can search using only part of a word if you are unsure of a spelling for examaple “an*t*” will find Anthony, Annette, Antony, Anita and many more variations
3. You will be able to perform ‘variant’ searches - this finds variants of first names and surnames. A variant search for Elizabeth would find you Liz, Eliza, Liza, Betty, Betsy, Beth and more
4. You will be able to perform an address search without the need for a street name allowing much more flexibility
5. You will be able to search date fields with a wider variation in date - for example birth year will allow to to search 5 years in either direction instead of the current 2 years