Search For Likely Addresses
People moved house more often in the 19th century than they do now, but searching by address can still provide results. Although they may not be in the property you found them in for the previous census, it’s worth checking birth certificates and other genealogical resources for potential addresses. Rate books are increasingly going online and can be useful for finding moves between censuses. Across all providers, street address searches work best for later censuses. For ancestry.co.uk, search within the specific census you are interested in and type the street name (no numbers) into the keyword box. For findmypast. co.uk, go to ‘A–Z of record sets’, type the year in the search box, and select the appropriate record set. This will let you choose to search by address or person. Thegenealogist.co.uk lets you choose ‘Search for an address’ on its Master Search page, and is the easiest to use for this option. Unfortunately, none of the providers cope very well with address searches, but persistence can usually get you to the right street. A tip from Audrey Collins at The National Archives is to use the index of streets (of major towns and cities) on this archived webpage: bit.ly/streets-project. Just scroll down and select the census you want.