GETTING THE BASICS RIGHT – 1911 CENSUS
Again we will start by logging onto: http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie. The SEARCH facility is exactly the same but you will get much more information on this 1911.
Again even though the SEARCH function is excellent unless you are very certain of your facts, you should stick to the minimum of information initially. Surname, County (Kerry), male/female and see what that throws up. So I am looking for my grandfather James Moloney, I know he lived somewhere in ‘Lyreacrompane’. If I input just ‘Moloney’ and ‘Kerry’ into the SEARCH form I get 127 Moloneys in Kerry. This is not very helpful, but I am quite sure that his name was ‘James’ so I will try add ‘James’ to the Forename SEARCH. I now have 14 James Moloneys, a more reasonable number to identify. However, none of the names have listed ‘Lyreacrompane’ as Townland or DED (District Electoral Division). Next I have an idea of his age (40 – 50)and I know that his wife’s name was Catherine, so it takes very little searching from the 14 names listed, to find James Moloney, Carrigcannon, age 40, his wife Catherine (25) and his son Daniel (my father) age 2.
Again recording and printing all the information, is important. There is some extra information available on this 1911 main form that you should note. Tick the box SHOW ALL INFORMATION. This will give you the number of years the couple were married and how many ‘children born’ and ‘children living’. This is especially important when you come across birth/baptismal records where there seem to have been two children with the same name born on different dates to the same couple. In a lot of nineteenth century Irish families it was quite customary to give the same name of one of the children who had died, to a new baby. This little snippet of information on the 1911 Census can be invaluable in getting over a ‘brick wall’.
A word of caution about age, particularly on the 1911 Census. Nineteenth Century Irish people were notoriously vague about their exact ages, and it was only when the 1908 Old Age Pension Act was introduced that they got very interested (in proving that they were eligible!). You will find that quite a number of the older age group, got much older than 10 years between 1901 and 1911.
On this particular Census Form that we are examining, I always knew that my father Daniel was a genius and this is copper fastened in this Census as aged 2 he was able to ‘read and write’!
Form A, Enumerator’s Abstract (Form N) and the House and Building Form will give you the same information that I have mentioned in my ‘Getting the Basics Right 1901 Census’ blog.
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