Ancestry.co.uk: search fails to turn up the obvious.

I've been searching for the Pickup family in Newtown, Montgomery and, apart
from 1901, it's been a farce. Search for John Pickup, born 1853 in
Cheshire, and only 1901 turns up. I assumed the problem was it was listing
the English places first because he was born in England so I turned to the
children. Tried Mary Pickup, born 1877 in Newtown and got the FreeBMD birth
entry at the top of the page but no census reports. It was only by limiting
the search to the Welsh census for 1881 that I found her.

Koromo...

I never use the main Ancestry search page where you are searching all
the censuses at once using the same search terms. A name like Pickup
could be spelled/indexed so many different ways on the various
censuses, eg. Pikup, Rickup, Pikkup, Pickap, as well as variations in
the date of birth, the spelling of the place of birth, etc. That's not
*always* Ancestry's fault - blame what the people wrote or said, or the
enumerators for writing it down incorrectly.

Graham P Davis...

Agreed. I usually use the broad-brush approach first then use the other
tactics to go for any missing years. It just bothers me that, time after
time, I find instances where I feel an entry should have appeared at number
one in the general search list but appears way down the pile. On a couple
of occasions I've found perfect matches past 200 in the listing.

Martin Briscoe (2)...

It is sometimes handy if you are not expecting very many matches then
you can see the others with similar name/age in each census year so
easier to eliminate in the one year when the one that you want might be
missing.

I have all the individual censuses bookmarked in a folder on my
Personal Tool Bar (or whatever it's called in your browser) so that it
works like a very accessible drop-down menu. I usually know which
particular census I want and can go straight to it. Mozilla/Firefox has
had tabbed browsing for years, and I often end up with all seven
England (or Wales) censuses open at once - one click and you're onto
the next one.

Graham P Davis...

Interesting idea.

Jenny M Benson...

Are you talking about Ancestry?

I put in "Mary Pickup, Montgomeryshire" and got 7 Census and 3 BMD
results. Not all were your Mary from Newtown but one of the 2 in the
1881 Wales Census (top of the list) was.

Graham P Davis...

Just tried again. Mary Pickup, born 1877, Wales, Montgomeryshire. First
record on the list, FreeBMD, is fine. Thereafter, what are all the
Lancashire girls doing on page 1? And one from the USA? My girl doesn't
appear in the first 100 in a search of all censuses.

Oh silly me! I forgot that Wales is not in the UK! Tick the box for "include
records originating outside the UK" and there they are.

As I said, what a shambles!

What a shambles! Tried complaining to them before on several occasions but
it does no good.

Jeff...

I found him on Ancestry easily enough:

Graham P Davis...

Tom Peel...

I am starting out on genealogy and I am encountering similar
frustrations. At the risk of exposing myself to scorn and ridicule from
more experienced genealogists, I will express my opinion as an IT
specialist. I would like to say up front that, while I consider the
FreeBMD site to be a good example of user friendliness, the
Ancestry.co.uk site most definitely is not.

The other posters point out correctly that if you search the Wales 1891
census, you will find what you are looking for. The key word is "IF"- IF
you search Wales 1891- however, Ancestry.co.uk doesn't seem to let you
search two census returns at once- you can either search one, or search
all of them- in which case, you get 1000's of irrelevant results all
lumped together.

Secondly, there is the matter of the "exact" checkbox. I have yet to
find anything using the "exact" checkbox, even when I know that the
fields I have entered are exactly correct. I can only assume that the
Ancestry search engine assumes that empty fields have to be exactly
empty. Any IT designer would at least consider designing the form so
that the fields can be individually tuned for exact matching or not, and
also recognise empty search fields as being non-exact.

Steven Gibbs...

I recommend using the "exact" checkbox, but with wildcards. Often, just
the first three characters of the first name and surname, and enough
other characters to reduce the results to a sensible number of matches
does the trick.

For example, seaching for Rebecca Woodcraft, I'd enter "Reb*" and
"Wood*ft". This catches Rebecca Woodcraft as required, but also Rebecca
Woodcroft, Rebekah Woodcroft and Rebekah Wooderaft, any of which might
be variant spellings or transcription errors.

The same applies to birthplaces. To search for someone born in
Biddenham, Bedfordshire, search on "Bid*m" without a county. This will
catch both misspellings of Biddenham and errors/omissions in the county
field. Only specify a more exact search if you find you're picking up
an unmanageable number of results due to another similarly-named
village. (Just "Bid*" in my example would include far too many other
places, but "Bid*n*" might find a few where the last character is

Hugh Watkins...

snip

I was an early adopter and had to wait a year for Monmouthshire 1891 to
come on line

We get to play with 6 terabytes of data (serviced by 800 to 1300
employees) and we are nearly a million users world wide - a
succsessful transitoion from publishing a magazine on paper to the web.

They sponsor FreeBMD and seveal thousand freebie web pages of my own
creation.

Learning
and

weeks of practice to get the best out of them

To use ancestry.co.uk quickly and effectively also takes practice

to know the best way to tackle a search including allowing for mistakes
in the origianal documents as well as typos

start with a surname or a first name then add items one by on to filter
the results until you get what youy ae looking for

use this as your sandbox

Search > Census > UK Census Collection > 1881 England Census

the CDs have a better search engine FolioViews

but the Keyword(s) search will take names, occuapptions street addresses
districts

finds some of the employees of the Great Western Railway

for example ;-

Job Angel
Age: 56
Estimated birth year: abt 1825
Relation: Head
Spouse's name: Ann
Gender: Male
Where born: Lacock, Wiltshire, England

Civil parish: Harmmersmith
County/Island: London
Country: England

Street address: 11 Craven Cottages
Education:

Employment status:

View image
Occupation: Plate Layer GWR

Registration district: Fulham
Sub-registration district: St Paul Hammersmith
ED, institution, or vessel: 18
Neighbors: View others on page
Household Members:
Name Age
Ann Angel 58
Henry Angel 29
Job Angel 56
William Angel 24

======================

if I search ball driver
I get 94 hits at 50 a page

including my great great uncle

1881 England Census
about William Ball
Name: William Ball
Age: 56
Estimated birth year: abt 1825
Relation: Head
Spouse's name: Margaret
Gender: Male
Where born: Bath, Somerset, England

Civil parish: Swindon
County/Island: Wiltshire
Country: England

Street address: 9 Reading St
Condition as to marriage: Married
Education:

Employment status:

View image
Occupation: Railway Engine Driver

Registration district: Highworth
Sub-registration district: Swindon
ED, institution, or vessel: 21
Neighbors: View others on page
Household Members:
Name Age
Frederick Ball 9
Margaret Ball 44
Margaret Ball 21
Minnie Ball 9
Thomas Ball 17
William Ball 56

<<
===============
now you can tailor make your own seasrches

&rg_81004011__date=1999 is the date year field
I put in 1999 as some easy to spot nonsense

&gsfn= is the empty forename field
etc etc
so an databse expert does not need a search box but can type directly in
the address line

enjoy

Hugh W

Tom Peel...

That is a useful piece of information. I had already figured out you can
increase the returns per page by tweaking some fields in the URL. Has
anybody put together some documentation on what all the fields mean?

Hugh Watkins...

just write in each field

Your Search for First Last returned no matches
You searched for First Last born in 2994

1841 census Isle of man

earlier in the evolution of the site we used some work arounds like this
but with each build they make small improvements so I don't meed to anymore

rootsweb.com is evolving fast
several of my ideas have been adopted and more are on a to do list
a private email told me

On the UK sites apart from pay per view
the worst bit of design is compulsory search fields

not allowing search without a surname for example
which rules out fishing for a maiden name
or working around a bad typo in a surname
like my Walkin for Watkins with a bad birthplace

I probably looked for every alfred of the right age in that county
it does take time and experience

Hugh W

mistranscribed.)

My third point is the apparent inability to sort the results. The
results appear to be sorted by "star rating". However, the star rating
itself is extremely crude. As a search often will churn out 100's of
results all with the same rating, so facility to sort/group results by
name, reg district or whatever would at least mitigate some of the pain
caused by the non-working "exact" checkbox.

Steven Gibbs...

The star rating is rubbish, but I never need it.

So suppose I resign myself to unchecking the "exact" checkbox and
plowing through 1000's of completely unsorted records. It would not be
so bad if Ancestry gave me the 1000's of records in a machine useable
form - like an xml file for example. Then I could load them into Excel
and browse the contents myself. Instead I get the machine-nonreadable
HTML pages, 50 results at a time to plow through.

Then finally there is the beek-a-boo game with the fields that you
didn't put into your search, but have to pay to look at. I realize that
Ancestry.co.uk have to make money, but I can have more fun and spend

Roy Stockdill...

The answer is perfectly simple - the people running Ancestry are money-
makers and hard-headed businessmen and most definitely not
genealogists. I doubt they either know or care what we actually want, just
so long as a sufficient number of people take out subscriptions.

This is why I prefer to support British companies like

BTW, has anyone noticed that the 1901 census index at Ancestry is no
longer free? I see they're also using Tony Robinson as a front man, who
may be a brilliant Baldrick but knows sod-all about genealogy!

less money in a peepshow.

Lucky you! I've just tried again and found him in 1871 in Yorkshire at the

Jeff...

Yes - must be luck !

Funny how some people are always "unlucky" isn't it?

top of the pile. The next entry is on page 3. Apparently, John W Pickup,
born 1860 in Cheshire is a better match (appears on page 1), as is another
John W born 1856 in Rochdale, and plain John born 1848 in Manchester.

The perfect matches for 1881 and 1891, correctly spelt name, exact year and
place of birth, get three stars each. The ones with the age 5 years out and
the wrong county score four stars, as does the one born 7 years too late.
Am I so wrong in regarding that as a shambles?

1891

Name: John Pickup
Age: 38
Estimated birth year: abt 1853
Relation: Head
Spouse's name: Jane
Gender: Male
Where born: Mickleham, Cheshire, England

Civil parish: Llanllwchaiarn
Ecclesiastical parish: Llanllwchaiarn
Town: Newtown
County/Island: Montgomeryshire
Country: Wales

1881

Name: John Pickup
Age: 28
Estimated birth year: abt 1853
Relation: Head
Spouse's name: Jane
Gender: Male
Where born: Micklehurst, Cheshire, England

Civil parish: Llanllwchaiarn
County/Island: Montgomeryshire
Country: Wales

Street address: Bryn St
Condition as to marriage: Married

1871

Name: John Pickup
Age: 18
Estimated birth year: abt 1853
Relation: Son
Father's name: William
Mother's name: Mary
Gender: Male
Where born: Micklehurst, Cheshire, England

Civil parish: Saddleworth
Ecclesiastical parish: Friarmere St Thomas
County/Island: Yorkshire
Country: England