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I wonder if anyone can help me find this family on 1861 wales census please.?
thomas pierce 1831 b denbighshire
Charlotte pierce 1833 b monmouthshire
Henry pierce 1854 merthyr
Jane pierce 1859 aberdare
John pierce 1858 aberdare

This is the family as they should be on 1861 census
I have 1871, and 1881 with more children
on 1871 census the name is spelt PIERCE
on1881 census the name is spelt PEIRCE
and the wifes name is eliz

so could be two marriages I have yet to sort this out haven't got certs yet. Been tracing family back from Esther Pierce my gt grandmother who incidentally was PEARCE on her marrisge cert.then changed to Hester watts 1881. I have all this info it is just 61

I have tried every person that should be on 61 census every spelling and failed to find them.
I would appreciate another pair of eyes as mine are worn out.
They can't all be missing can they?
Thank you for reading this
Val

Don't know where Thomas is ...


Name: Jane Peers
Age: 2
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1859
Relation: Daughter
Mother's Name: Charlot
Gender: Female
Where born: Aberdare, Glamorgan, Wales

Civil Parish or Township: Llanwonno
County/Island: Glamorgan
Country: Wales

Registration district: Merthyr Tydfil
Sub-registration district: Gelligaer
ED, institution, or vessel: 15
Household schedule number: 95

Charlot Peers 27
Ester Peers 1 Mo
Henry Peers 9
Jane Peers 2
John Peers 4

Just fyi -- searched in 1861 for

jane (no surname)
in Aberdare
born 1859 in Aberdare
father tho*
mother cha*

She was about a dozen down the list.

Checked the image, suspecting John was 4 mo rather than 4 yr, but it just says 4. (edit -- that's okay, I was confused, thinking John was supposed to be younger than Jane)

Charlot is married, coalminer's wife, born Pontypool. Living in Village of Mt Ash, hamlet of Gyn Cynon?

If that ain't them, I'll try again!

I'm here just trying to take it all in
Val

I think you are BRILLIANT Thank you I searched all day yesterday There must have been two esther mine was born 1874. Now I have to find out which mother was my hesters. and when charlotte died and when he marrisd eliz. Thanks are not enough Val

You just gotta know how to trick those search engines!

The secret is to use as little info as possible when searching, getting you more results than you'd prefer, but then when you scan through the names in the results list (one reason I make sure I get 50 results for each return rather than 10 or 20, for quicker scanning), what you're looking for will usually hit you in the face if it's there.

Pierce, Peirce ... Peers. Smack. ;)

I guess you been doing this a long time
Val

I practised by looking for my Moncks, starting just over 2 years ago. I had no idea there were mistranscriptions. Laugh if you will.

Not until I looked at a random John and Jane Monck and found them living with all their little Mouck children.

The light came on, and I searched ... and I found Morcks and Mouch-s and Monohs and Monaks and Moreks -- all christened Monck. And their Monk counterparts, the Morks and Mouks ...

As it turned out, my gr-grfather was actually christened Hill. Not Monck. Discovered that when I searched for births for Ernest Augustus no surname, just in case of dreaded mistranscriptions I couldn't predict or account for (since you have to have 3 letters to use the wild card).

Many, many hours of dredging around in the records following Mr. Hill and his familiy around -- he disappeared precisely when my own gr-grfather Monck married and then went to Australia for a few years -- I found my Ernest Monck in 1901, at long last, by searching for his wife my gr-grmother as Annie born 1865 +/-1 in Romford living in East Ham. There he was, Ernest MoRIck (one I'd never thought of), with all his Mark children on the next page. Matching Ernest Hill in all particulars.

Of course, it was another year before it occurred to me that anyone could actually mistranscribe "Hill". Yup, a couple of hundred Hells in the UK censuses. Ernest finally turned up in 1871 as Earnest A. Hile -- which is in fact exactly what the census page says in perfect copperplate. Mistranscribing is a long tradition in the census biz, it seems.

So yeah ... a long time. With much learned through hard experience along the way. ;)

going to bed happy now will try again tomorrow thanks
Val

P.S. If you find Thomas send him home !!!!!! lol

I've got a Monck in my tree can't remember how it is spelt married to a White if i remember correctly Definately going now will look again at thread tomorrow Val

Well, I found a doppelgänger:


Charlotte Pierce 38
Henrietta Pierce 1
Henry Pierce 17
Jane Pierce 12
John Pierce 13
Llewellyn Pierce 8
Samuel Pierce 6
Thomas Pierce 40
Thomas Pierce 4


but that's about all I can come up with, and of course it's wrong.

I did find someone allegedly born in Crackhouse, Somerset ...

Hi Valerie -- I finally figured out what you were talking about in your PM! (I hate PMs. I like threads.)

That family in my previous post, with Charlotte and Thomas, is in the same census as the other one I first found -- 1871. So it had to be a different one.

No, wait, the Peers household was in 1861, wasn't it?

So it *was* the right one, the one you already had in 1871?

That makes sense. I apologize for confusing you, after all that! The 1871 household I found was the one you already had, the same people I found in 1861. Duh.

(It happens because I keep a tab open for each English census year, so I always know "when" I am. But when I want to search for Wales I just use the general census search form, and I landed myself in the wrong year by mistake.)

I did look diligently for Thomas in 1861, but to no avail.

Now, "where did you find the birth data that shows mother and father?" Did I do that?

Oh, I see -- no, I had that data because you gave it to me. ;) You said:

>> thomas pierce 1831 b denbighshire
>> Charlotte pierce 1833 b monmouthshire
Henry pierce 1854 merthyr
Jane pierce 1859 aberdare
John pierce 1858 aberdare

So I went looking:

in Aberdare
in 1861
for a Jane no-name
born abt 1859 in Aberdare
who had a father Thomas and a mother Charlotte
-- which I shortened to their first three letters + a wild card (*), in case of mistranscriptions (or in case Thomas was Thos, for instance). Fortunately, since Charlotte was indeed Charlot in 1861!


If you find Thomas in 1861, let us know. ;)

Good evening Kathryn, Been watching Cranford on the telly only just got back. Sorry to confuse you with pm. I was confused as it was the family as in 1871. The trouble is I couldn't understand where you searched allowing you to put mother and father in to confirm the birth. I know the info is in the igi pre 1837 but I do not know where else to look for births that tells you mothers name,pre 1912. What I wanted to know where was this search done? Been working on hester 1874 husband today not having much luck there either., but will keep looking.
Regards Val

Ah, the basic info missing?

I searched at Ancestry. The search form allows you to search for an individual by his/her mother's, father's and/or spouse's name.

And the bit you're missing is: *you told* me the mother's and father's name -- in your very first post. ;)

There's no way I would have known it otherwise -- unless I'd found the household in the later census through some stroke of luck, and then traced it back.

But in fact, I and others here would have been saying, if you had *not* given us that info:

WHAT ARE THE PARENTS' NAMES?

for instance. You did it all exactly correctly: you gave all the info you had -- names of all people who should have been in the household, dates of birth, places of birth. In a nice neat list and not a run-on sentence. You are the perfect poster, believe me!

I was able to find what you couldn't because I thought outside the box, and just dropped the surname from the search altogether instead of trying to guess how it might have been misspelled/mistranscribed.

You gave enough details that the search results were not too huge.

Also, I searched for the youngest child, because there are always likely to be fewer children with particular parents' names, the younger they are at census time, and you can probably be a little surer that the age is correct for very young children than for older ones.

So is it clearer now? You gave the info, I ran with it, but with less of it than you'd been using. It got me more results than you were getting, because I didn't specify a surname, but it meant that it caught your people with the weird version of their surname, and when I saw it, I thought of course, Peers=Pierce.

Sorry been searching for thomas' death, no luck. Very fed up today as they seem to be a pain .Incidentally what do you think I found them under on 1891 census? Luckily thomas was a pierce and still alive the rest were ......................GRIFFITHS. If I had searched for the others I would never have found them. Thanks again for your help, I might be screaming at the boards this time next week if things don't look up. Val

Just a quick note, I have been reading your thread on Hill/monck. I think I would have been taken away kicking and screaming if I had those problems!!!!! How you managed to sort all the info is amazing , mine must have been a doddle, I feel very ashamed now that I asked for help. I suppose it will come with experience and maybe one day I can return the favour for someone else. Val

I had amazing luck!

Searching for the birth of Ernest Augustus Monck and finding Ernest Augustus Hill at the exactly right time, and in one of the places a genealogist had once theorized he might have been from, Cornwall. (I don't know where the theory came from, but she might have found Ernest Monk in the 1881 census as being the only possibility for him; she also suggested Ireland or Germany ... big help.)

That was a Bong.

Then searching for the birth of his daughter Ada who had died in infancy (my mother had only recently learned of her existence) and finding that she was Ada Lennox Monck, and having the marriage of a different Ada Lennox Monck 20 years earlier pop up at the same time (before Ancestry separated the searches for births, marriages and deaths).

Another Bong.

Without searchable databases, there is No Way In Hell that I would ever, ever have found any of this. I wasn't looking for it! So I wouldn't have known where to look, whom to look for ...

Then the one tale told by Ernest Monck that anyone remembers that seems actually to have been true -- I learned it from my uncle only *after* I had found all of my stuff: that he had a family that was wiped out by a plague. Ernest Hill's brother, daughter, first wife, niece and probably other relations died of tuberculosis. Not "confirmation", but supporting evidence.

So yeah. Yours was a dawdle. ;)

I suppose having living family to ask questions also helps.I have to rely on what I can remember as I have none left. I had no siblings neither did my mother and my father only one who was killed at 26.!! I came into this just too late to get any family help.I have only just started on my family. I am now 64 and the brain just doesn't work like it used to.!!! lol.So I am on my own trying to find my roots so to speak. Good luck with your continued research. Val