Find Pre-1841 genealogy information at the Early British Census Project

Day one of the world's biggest genealogy conference, RootsTech, is over and the highlight for me was a very short session about the Early British Census Project. A Brigham Young University genealogy initiative, the project is bringing together in one place, pre-1841 census data from all over the UK, Ireland and Channel Islands.

Picture of the Early British Census Project home page at Brigham Young University.

So far the Project team has extracted information from 184 censuses, however, they estimate there are 1400 such datasets. Best of all, access is online and free.

To test the database, I searched for one of my family's more unusual surnames, Caley, with the following results:

Example of the search interface.

I followed the link to one of the records which returned the following information. (Note there is a reference citing where copies or transcripts of the original record can be found.)

Sample search results for Caley at Walthamstow, England.

Do yourself a favour and take five minutes to look at this Roots Tech session. If you don't want to register for RootsTech, then you can also view the video on YouTube.

Conclusion

In my opinion this project is well worth keeping an eye on and returning to time and again as the database grows.

Let me know what you think about this initiative in the Comments Section below.

In the meantime, happy ancestor hunting.

Therese

Your Family Genealogist

Pictures : Early British Census Project, Brigham Young University