A few weeks ago I wrote about the 1871 census, a new addition to the databases at Ancestry. Now the 1901 census is beginning to appear, and the two enumerations will grow to completion together over the coming months. As of writing, six counties are available for 1901 (London, Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex).

History and Contrast
In 1901, Queen Victoria died, the United Kingdom was fighting the Boer War in South Africa, the first transatlantic wireless signal was transmitted from Cornwall to Newfoundland, and Edward Elgar wrote Pomp and Circumstance. England was a powerful and wealthy industrial country, but also a country of contrasts.

The contrasts were between those living in poverty and those who were comfortable, and between the industrial and agricultural regions. Lancashire, for example, had 46% of the labor force in manufacturing and Cambridgeshire had 26% in agriculture. The industrial revolution had changed the look of England. In 1901, 1.4 million people (9% of the labor force) worked in agriculture. This number had been 2.1 million (or 22% of the labor force) in 1851. Another shift was moving workers into service jobs, up from 25% in 1851 to 40% of the work force in 1901.

The middle class lived a comfortable life, most of them able to afford at least one live-in servant. Lydia Catherine Walden, the daughter of a London basket manufacturer, studied music while her brothers learned the family business. She was at home in London in 1901 with her recently widowed mother, offering no clue of her future as Catherine Finch in the small, rough coal-mining town of Cumberland on Vancouver Island. She married a carpenter, Louis Howard Finch, at Duncan (also on the Island) in 1912—one wonders about the reaction of her family. A few years later the Finches settled permanently at Cumberland. "Auntie Kay" had no children of her own, lived to the age of 101, and spent her life sharing music with the community, in particular with the children of the Chinese mine workers. This was a life of contrasts revealed in part by a succession of census returns on two sides of the world.

Genealogical Considerations
Differences of detail between the 1871 and 1901 census returns are few and minor. All the major data remains the same: first name, last name, relationship to head of household, marital status, age, profession/occupation, and place of birth. The 1871 census offers less information about houses (no facts about families crowded into a few rooms) and about work (whether a person is an employer, a worker, or self-employed).

For information on searching the 1901 returns, refer to the article on the 1871 census and review instructions at the census site.

If you are uncertain about which census to consult first, gather some facts or set a reasonable range of years and area. Search first in the census that is most likely to produce a hit. Whether or not you find the ancestor, follow up with searches in the other censuses. Inconsistencies exist and need to be known in order to estimate the factual basis for the next stage.

Conclusions
As I worked on this article I marveled at what could be accomplished sitting in one place, and at the rate at which change has occurred. It will not be long before all the censuses for England and Wales will be online. Right now, between Ancestry, FamilySearch, Family History Online, and various CD-ROM products, nearly all returns are available in a digital format.

We all enjoy this ease of access and we all are prey to the pitfalls it creates. Always use the zoom and magnifying tools to check names and facts carefully. Always follow a household through every possible census. Always wander the neighborhood—keep a detailed map handy, read returns of neighbors, even entire streets and villages. Take away from the online census more than specific facts and use the time saved by technology to better investigate the lives of your ancestors.

Further Reading
Comox Valley Memories, by Judy Hagan, published by the Courtenay and District Museum and Historical Society, 1993.

A brief history of Cumberland is available at www.bctravel.com/ni/comoxhis.html.

For more about England and Wales at the end of the 1800s visit the history page of the British Broadcasting Corporation www.bbc.co.uk/history/.

Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA (Scot) is an author, teacher, and lecturer specializing in English and Scottish family history. She is the author of Your English Ancestry (2nd ed, 1998) and Your Scottish Ancestry (1997) and she is a regular contributor to several journals including Genealogical Computing. Since 1996, she has been a study tour leader, course coordinator, and instructor for the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research at Samford University. She teaches online for the family history program of Vermont College and has lectured at conferences in Canada, the United States, and Australia. She is past president of the Association of Professional Genealogists.