Introduction and Disclaimer

Please note that the transcriptions which form this database were originally made for the personal use of the author and have not been subjected to independent verification. However they are made available here on an entirely “as is” basis since they may be of use, as a first line of enquiry, to people without ready access to other sources.

Naturally, users who wish to make use of any information found here should check it against the original sources and therefore each item displayed is accompanied by the full reference for the item at The National Archives.

Please advise us (see below) of any errors or omissions and every effort will be made to resolve the discrepancy. Indeed, it became apparent during the preparation of this website that there were a number of existing queries and where relevant these are identified in the output. It is intended that these queries will be resolved in due course.

How to Search the Coaley Census Database

All searches are made by entering the required search keywords into the input box on the home page of this section of the site.

These are likely to be the forename and surname of a person you are interested in. However, the searches are not just carried out over the forename and surname fields but also over the census year, house, area, relation, marital status, profession or occupation and where born fields. Searches can therefore be made more specific by using suitable additional search keywords (e.g. “1861” would limit results to just that year and “farmer” limits results to just those including “farmer” in the profession or occupation field. However, it should be noted that this would include entries like “farmer’s wife”.

In general, searches may be made using one or more single keywords (e.g. John Smith) and phrases (in double quotes e.g. “Coaley Wood”).   Use the usual three operators [and , or, not] between single keywords and phrases to carry out more complex searches. If you do not put an “and” or “or” between items then an “and” is automatically assumed.  You can also use brackets (…), to group items e.g. (John or William) and Brown will match John Brown or William Brown.

Searches are case insensitive (i.e. lower case letters will match both upper case (capital) and lower case letters.

Keywords will match all words containing the keyword, e.g. man will match   man, Manning, trowman etc.

“Wildcards” may be used in the keywords. A percent symbol (%) in a keyword will match any one or more characters at the position of the % and an underscore (_) will match any single character at the position of the _. For example J%es will match Jones, James, Jesse and Jessica.

Note: Care must be taken with the use of “phrases” in double quotes. They must only be used to find the “phrase” within fields and not across fields as this will fail.

Interpreting the Results

All entries in the database which match the search keywords are displayed on a new line in the output and begin with the word Coaley, followed by the data from the relevant fields in the database in a consistent order. If the database contains a “Null” in any field then no output from that field is included in the output line.

The order the data is displayed is Coaley (all lines), census year, forename, surname (in capitals) house, area, relation, marital status, age, gender, profession or occupation and where born.

This is followed within square brackets […] by any relevant notes, and the full National Archives reference, schedule number and a code for the position of the line in that schedule. Finally, still within the square brackets there are a pair of links which enable the user to view the entry in context. Clicking on the page link will display all the entries on the same page and clicking on the househould link will display all the enties belonging to to same schedule number (typically just one household).

In the case of, e.g. RG9/1752-42-14 81e, The National Archives reference is RG9/1752-42-14, where RG9/1752 is the piece number, 42 is the folio and 14 the page number. The additional information, (81e) means that the entry is contained within schedule number 89 and the ‘e’ denotes it is the fifth entry in that schedule (where ‘a’ denotes 1 and ‘b’ denotes 2 etc.).

Feedback

Please email us with any comments or corrections.

Copyright

©   Census data is reproduced under the Open Government Licence from the census records preserved in The National Archives.

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