Day: February 10, 2016

1841 Census of England and Wales limited by birthplace Ireland (Ancestry)

1841 Census of England and Wales limited by birthplace Ireland (FamilySearch)

If you use Ancestry, beware that whatever problems are causing searching to be slow as molasses, they are also making search results unreliable. Just for fun, I looked at the 1841 England and Wales census for all people born in Ireland. Ancestry returned 208 hits. That cannot be right. Sure, it was pre-famine, but there had to have been more Irish folks living in England at that time.

I did the same search at FamilySearch, with much more believable results.

You would expect some variation in total numbers, because of human error. Ancestry and FamilySearch have their own transcriptions, and those are full of fun mistakes. The numbers should be in the same ballpark, though. The results from both searches for the 1851 England census are generally in line.

1851 Census of England and Wales limited by birthplace Ireland (Ancestry)

1851 Census of England and Wales limited by birthplace Ireland (FamilySearch)

So clearly the problem is affecting random searches and is not consistent across the board.