Why aren't they on the census?

Question

Why are so many of my family missing from the 1901 census? It's a mix of men and women so they can't all be off at a war or something.

Answer 1

Although the government claims a high rate of completions on a Census, the fact is that I, in my mid-60's, was never included in a single census until 1990; I have, therefore, been included in 2 Censuses. My point is, that many people, numerically and percentage-wise, were NOT included in any Census. That may be the case with your folks.
Another case is that the records were kept by hand, no copies made, many were lost or destroyed (as was definitely the case during the Revolutionay and Civil Wars).
Further, many people were born at home; there was no official notice unless they paid property taxes, etc.
Thus, a child could be born at home and die at an early age and never appear in any record what-so-ever. (Two of my aunts died, one at 2, the other at 4...no record of them.)
Going back in time, there was a higher and higher percentage of people NOT counted in the Census.
Hope this helps.
Just because they were NOT in the Census doen't mean they were not in other records, Civil records or Church records. The best would be Family records. Also check military records.

Answer 2

The census enumerator was a very busy guy that day. Spelling may not have been his strong point, particularly if your relatives had an unusual name. Added to that is the writing which may have been less than clear, and that is just for starters. When the images came to be transferred to the web, further misrepresentations could be made due to poor spelling, illegible writing, guess work, any number of factors. Try every spelling you can think of. Write out the name badly and ask someone else to read it back. Try looking for another relative that should have been in the house (like a child). Even try an alternative website. I too have these problems, but some I have managed to resolve by some or all of these techniques. Others I keep trying...

Answer 3

It depends a bit. If you are certain of the address, and have found the address with no-one there, then presumably they were off on a visit. What most likely happens is that they can't be found on a search of sites such as Ancestry. This could be because they were missed by the emumerator, or that particular page went missing before it arrived at the PRO or they missed out on filming it with all the others. More likely is that a search has failed to reveal it because there has been an error in transcription. I've found a lot of these and report them as soon as I find them, so there must be loads of these. The best way is to try different spellings, or leave out from searches the place of birth, which seems to account for a lot of errors, especially ones that are out of the census county.

Age can be another error, as can gender, believe it or not. sometimes it's worth searching the whole area.

There was a cartoon, can't remember which census, where it said ladies are taking leave of their census, as a protest against not being allowed to vote.

Finally if you can't find it on one site you may well find it on another as my friend did last week.

Happy Hunting

Answer 4

You may want to check your spelling. The census taker may not have spelled the name as it appears today. Sound it out, and check every variation of the spelling. For example, Lawrence could be spelled: Lorintz, Laurens, etc. Check the area as well. Look at other censuses to see if the family was in that area. (By the way, I have not heard of the 1901 census. Is that not in the US?)

Answer 5

There are a lot of reasons, including, but not limited to:
1 - They lived somewhere other than where you are looking and therefore seem to be hidden
2 - There have been name changes
3 - They simply didn't get counted or hid themselves at that moment (yes, it does happen)
4 - They were living with someone else and those people didn't count people other than their direct family

But don't give up, try the census before and after, and see what comes up

Answer 6

It could be that on the night of the census they were staying at friends, relitives or even avoiding the census altogether!
The census back then wasn't based on who lived in the property but who was staying there on that night.

Hope that helps... try also to look at neighbouring houses for your relatives, it could be that when the census guy turned up they were round a neighbours.

Answer 7

I found that some of my ancestors were missing off the 1901 Census return on the Ancestry site, http://www.ancestry.co.uk/

I did however find them on the 1901 census return site, http://www.1901censusonline.com/

Answer 8

Most are there somewhere if we can just figure out how to look for them. Except a lot of families with young men seem missing 1860 US. I have one ancestor who must have been changing trains when the census taker came by.

Answer 9

Have you tried the various spellings of the surnames you want to find, names do change, how often does your surname get miss spelt, if all else fails you could a request out on the channel 4 teletext web pages 174 / 175

Hope this helps and good hunting

Answer 10

Which country are you in, if you are in the UK and would like a hand with this you can email me and I'll have a look to see what I can find for you.