Born where on the census?
Many people have difficulty finding an ancestor’s birth/baptism in the place given in a census. It is accepted that the place of birth may be wrong or inaccurate. Here are a couple of reasons why this might be.
The further the place of birth is from the place of residence the less accurate they may be. For example, if a person was in Surrey and asked for their place of birth, they might say Manchester; if they were in Greater Manchester, they might say Altrincham; if they were in Altrincham, they might say Timperley. So rather than looking for their birth in Manchester, Lancashire you would need to be looking in Timperley, Cheshire.
I have seen sometimes that a whole household has the same place of birth and that place of birth is the same as the place they were living in. They may all be local, of course, or there could have been a mistake by the enumerator. If the householder did not complete the column, the enumerator may have assumed
they were all local or the enumerator may have assumed they all had the same place of birth as the head of the household and, without checking, just ditto’d the whole lot.
Alternatively, if the whole page has the same place, maybe the enumerator just got tired. I now take the places of birth in such households with a pinch of salt until I can be sure from other censuses or sources that they are correct.
Another reason might be that the statistician who was using the data makes an amendment to the place as he had misunderstood where the place is. For example, in the 1901 census in Barton in Irwell, Lancashire the place of birth had been written as ‘Cumberland, Barrow’, but ‘Cumberland’ has been crossed out (as Barrow in Furness was in Lancashire) and ‘Cheshire’ written instead (as there is a Barrow in Cheshire, which is nearer than Barrow in Furness). This correction may be included in the index, so if you are looking for Agnes, born in Lancashire, you will not find her.
There is a worse example where a whole town (and everyone born there has been moved from Lancashire to Yorkshire). Newton in Makerfield in Lancashire was also known as Newton Le Willows. In the 1901 census (RG13 3574 folio 5), wherever Newton Le Willows has been given as the place of birth, ‘Lancashire’ has been crossed out and ‘York’ written in with a tick (indicating a foreign county). Again the correction may be in included in the index, so looking for Florence E Graham, born in Lancashire will not find her.
Sue Turner
Editor: Thanks for your observations Sue; they’re useful lessons to us all. Recently I noticed an 1871 census entry which made me think that the enumerator was filling in his summaries column by column. E.g. (see above, far left) he entered ‘Dublin, Ireland’, then crossed it out and put ‘Do’, then entered ‘Dublin, Ireland’ on the line below. If he hadn’t noticed then every subsequent person on the page would have been listed with place of birth for the person on the line above them.