1921 Censuses of England, Wales, Channel Islands, Isle of Man on Ancestry

Up until January 6, 2025, the only place you could view the 1921 censuses of England, Wales, Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man from home was Findmypast. This census had been released on the Findmypast site in January 2022. However, to access that census from home, one either had to have what Findmypast currently calls their "Everything" subscription or pay either for the transcription or to see the images associated with a household on a per household view. That all changed earlier this year when Ancestry added that 1921 census to their catalogue since Findmypast no longer had the exclusive rights to host the images online.

Before we look at this census on Ancestry, it might be a good idea for folks to first read the Findmypast blog page "The 1921 Census is now online for the very first time" and also follow the links on Findmypast's help page "The 1921 Census of England & Wales" as a refresher to understand what was captured and how it was taken. I'll let you read it yourself. When that census was released online in 2022 there was also a flurry of blog posts writing about it such as John Reid's "1921 Census Experience" on Anglo Celtic Connections.

However, before jumping into the images on Ancestry, I want to highlight a few things:

The first issue with this census is that it wasn't taken on Sunday, April 24, 1921 like what it written on all the forms. Due to the "industrial crisis" (mass strikes!) happening at the time, the census had been postponed until June 19, 1921. Of course this can throw a wrench into finding your kin since they may have already started their holidays a bit early. That happened to me with one of my distant cousins.

The next is that this census, unlike the 1950 census of the USA and 1931 Census of Canada which were transcribed using AI enhanced handwriting recognition technology, was transcribed by humans. That is why it took about six months for it to be published with a searchable index on Findmypast instead of the days we are now seeing on Ancestry for newly released censuses.

Finally, when you viewed the image of the census page with the folks listed at an address on Findmypast, you also had the option to view the "Extra" images associated with that page:

• "Cover" of the enumerator's book
• "Address", which was written on the other side of the page that had all the details about who resided at that location. The "address" included details to help one to create a "good" citation.
  
• "Map" showing the big picture of the area to be enumerated
• "Plans of Division" that describes that enumerator district

Findmypast made it easy for us to access all those extra images. If you retrieved the image of the page with the people at a place from Findmypast, hopefully you also downloaded the extra images to your computer for safekeeping and later review.

But what it you didn't spend the money from your genealogy budget (yes, I have a budget for my research) on either the "Everything"subscription on Findmypast or buying access to the individual images? Maybe you only purchased the right to view the transcription on Findmypast and didn't pay to view the image.

Well, if you have a subscription with Ancestry that includes the censuses of England, you now have access to the transcriptions and images without paying extra.

Yet like most of our genealogy and family history research, there are a few gotchas with using the census on Ancestry:

The first is there currently isn't a single search page on Ancestry for the 1921 census for England, Wales, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man like we found on Findmypast. But we can use the existing "UK Census Collection" search page like I show here to search for Harry Warrener. I used the "Residence Date" search box at the bottom of the form to limit the search to exactly 1921 (highlighted in a red oval).

Screen capture of Ancestry's "UK Census Collection" search page looking for Harry Warrener with a Residence Date of exactly 1921, taken 14 Jan 2025.

By doing this, you can easily search the individual Ancestry 1921 census collections of

• 1921 Channel Islands Census
• 1921 England Census
• 1921 Isle of Man Census
• 1921 Wales Census

all in one go.

The next thing to understand is the source of the transcription used to create the searchable index.

Here I've recreated the search I used to find the page with the enumeration of Annie Leontine Chipman. I know we should treat each person in our tree equally but Annie has become a favourite of mine just due to the interesting life she led, challenges she presented me in finding her in the records, and what some of those records have taught me in terms of how they were created (Annie Leontine Chipman and a Census Mystery).

Screen capture of Findmypast's 1921 Census of England & Wales search results for Leontine Chipman, taken 14 Jan 2025.

Here are the results of the same query on Ancestry:

Screen capture of Ancestry's UK Census Collection search results for Leontine Chipman with a residence date of exactly 1921, taken 14 Jan 2025.

Everything seems to be same. My guess is that Findmypast, as part of their agreement with The National Archives (TNA) in England, has given TNA the transcriptions and Ancestry is using those transcriptions instead of creating their own.

Why do I think that?

1921 census of England, Devonshire, Coombe House, St. George's Road, Torquay, extract; digital images, Findmypast, Findmypast (www.findmypast.com : accessed 30 Jul 2024); citing RG 15/10483 Sch 53, registration district 272, sub district 6, enumeration district 31.

In looking at the entry for Leontine Chipman on the image of the occupants of "Coombe House" on St. George's Road in Torquay, Devon we can clearly see that the birthplace for Leontine is "Cornwallis Nova Scotia". I'm suspecting the transcriber tried to fit a square peg in a round hole and selected "Cornwall, England" from a drop down box. 

In a chat with John Reid, he asked Gemini what was written in that box in the image and Gemini came back with:

"The image appears to say:
Cornwallis
Nova Scotia
Let me know if you have any other images you need transcribed!"

This transcription error made it a bit of a challenge to find her initially since she should have been in Northumberland County, England instead of holidaying in Devonshire. I had initially discounted that index entry since it stated Cornwall and not Nova Scotia or Canada as her birth place. If it hadn't been for the kindness of a stranger who had a full subscription with 1921 census access on Findmypast to quickly check the image from the record for me I would never have found her. But this quirk also seems to indicate that the transcriptions on Ancestry originally came from the work done by Findmypast.

When it comes to viewing the images on Ancestry, if we want to see almost all the same images that are pointed to on Findmypast, we need to do a bit of work ourselves.

Screen capture of the top part of Ancestry's page from the 1921 England Census for Leontine Chipman, taken 14 Jan 2025.

When we look at the details page for Leontine Chipman and click on the image shown, we are brought to the page in the census with the details recorded for everyone at the location as of midnight 19 Jun 1921.

To view the other side of that page with the street address, registration district number, registration sub-district number, and enumeration district number we need to go to the next image. On Findmypast, this is the image they labelled as "Address". 

If you are like me and save any of the images you find about your kin to your computer, make sure you also save this one too.

You will also probably want to go to the first image of the image filmstrip for that Enumeration district to get the other details about the enumeration district and also the "series piece number" for your source citation. The series piece number is the number after the RG15 that was written on the page when it was archived at The National Archives.

Cover page for Registration District 272, Registration Sub-district 6, Enumeration District 30 & 31 with the RG and Series Piece Number written on the page.

What about the "Plan of Division" pages that were linked to on Findmypast? They are from RG114 at The National Archives. That takes a bit more effort to locate on Ancestry since they are stored a bit differently. On Ancestry we need to browse the images, pick the county we are interested, select the appropriate name of the registration district, and then select "Not Stated" as the Sub-registration district.

In the case of where Leontine was residing when the census took place, on that "Cover" page from the enumerator's book, we can faintly read "Newton Abbot" beside the number 272 as the registration district. Next we need to walk through the images to find the "Plan of Division" page for 272 number 6. On Ancestry's filmstrip, that was found on image 203 of 278. Finally we want to location the page for Enumeration District 30 and 31 which is located on images 255 and 256 where we learn the boundary descriptions of those two enumeration districts.

As for the maps of the registration districts provided by Findmypast as one of the "extra" images, those appear to be from The National Archives RG 18 (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/h/C16337741) but they don't seem to have been added to the Ancestry collection for the 1921 census. Using The National Archives site I as able to quickly browse through the descriptions to location registration district 272 to find that RG 18/1103 is a "Collage of Ordnance Survey map sheets cut, mounted and annotated to show the following registration districts as used for the 1921 census...District 272, sub-district 6: Torquay" (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C990371). Alas, I've also not been able to find these maps on sites other than Findmypast. So if you know of a site with the TNA RG 18/830-1465 collage of maps, please let me know!

Hopefully with the information I've provided, you will be able to better document in your tree on Ancestry all your kin who were in England, Wales, Channel Islands, or Isle of Man when that 1921 census was taken.

Have fun in your noble quest to learn more about your family lines!

Annie Leontine Chipman and a Census Mystery

It has been a while since I last wrote a blog post. Until fairly recently my research has been of the mundane sort of finding and updating information on the many various branches on my tree. 

However, that was until a few days ago when I was waiting for a presentation I was giving on "Chipping Away at the Brick Wall" for the Southeastern Branch of the New Brunswick Genealogical Society to begin. In that talk I give examples of assumptions I've made in my research and Annie Leontine Chipman, my 1st cousin three times removed (and my 4th cousin 3 times removed...in two different ways...yes, my Chipman line is "interesting" at times), is one such example. I also like to periodically look for information about her since she led an very interesting life and constantly challenges any assumptions I've made in my research. Even her grave marker told an interesting tale since she is a recipient of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

 Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/167501062/anne-leontine-chipman : accessed 18 January 2022), memorial page for Anne Leontine Chipman (11 Feb 1864–10 Mar 1937), Find a Grave Memorial ID 167501062, citing Oak Grove Cemetery, Kentville, Kings County, Nova Scotia, Canada ; Maintained by LMK (contributor 47573469).

However, this time it is about her being found in two places in census records of two countries almost at the same time.

Early on in my research days I had found her in the 1881 census of Canada in Kentville, Kings County, Nova Scotia, Canada. That census was taken on April 4, 1881.

1881 census of Canada, Nova Scotia, district 17, sub-district F-1, Kentville, p. 2, dwelling 5, family 5, Annie L Chipman; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 7 Feb 2013); citing Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-13173.

There I found her in the household of her father Leverett DeVeber Chipman, her mother Nancy, and siblings Wilford (Wilford Henry Chipman), and Eva (Lena Evangeline Chipman). All simple and very straightforward...or so I thought.

As I mentioned, she keeps throwing me curve balls in my research and she did it again in the 1881 census. While waiting for the meeting to begin I pulled up Annie's profile in Ancestry and clicked on the search button not really expecting to find something. Yet I was in for a shock when Ancestry pointed me to an 1881 census in England for an Annie Leoline Chapman who was born about 1864 with "Nova Scotia Kentville (British Subject)" as the place of birth attending as a student at Kilburn College in Kilburn, Middlesex.

1881 census of England, Middlesex, Parish of Willesden, Kilburn, Ecclesiastical Parish of St Johns, folio 54, page 23, Alice Leontine Chapman; digital images, Ancestry.com, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com/ : accessed 18 Jan 2022); citing PRO RG 11/1364.

Once I looked at the image I could see that it wasn't "Leotine" but there was an "n" added beneath that word as a correction so it read "Leontine". The place of birth and the age was right so just how was this possible? The 1881 census of England was taken on April 3, 1881 but she is recorded as being in the household of her father on April 4, 1881. There were no airplanes in 1881 so how did she travel more than 4,500 km in a day?

That is when I recalled Janice Nickerson's great presentation she gave titled "Ontario Census Fundamentals" for the Toronto Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society in November 2021. She had mentioned that the Canadian censuses use the "de jure system" of enumeration. 

So just what does this mean?

In the "Manual containing The Census Act, and the instructions to officers employed in the taking of the second census of Canada, (1881)", of which a copy can be found on the Internet Archive, they state:

"The principle adopted for the registration of the population is that which is called by statists the population de droit or de jure ; that is, the population legally domiciled within the territory of the Dominion, and including all persons who may be temporarily absent from their place of abode, whether at the fisheries, at sea, or in the forest wilderness, &c."

Great.

But how does this really get applied in Annie's situation?

You have to keep reading further in the Instructions to the Enumerators where it states:

"Therefore, the names of seamen at sea, college students and school children, of the sick in hospitals, of inmates temporarily present in educational, charitable or penal institutions, are to be taken down in their own provinces, at their own domiciles or homes, and not at temporary abiding places or institutions. In other words, all living members of one family are to be registered as being present at the family abode, unless they are settled in homes of their own, or have left the country with intention not to return."

This matches Annie Leontine Chipman perfectly. She was attending school and she had left the country but she was going to return back to Canada after school.

How about the 1881 Census of England and Wales? In the "Census of England and Wales, 1881. Instructions to the Various Officers as to Their Duties in Taking the Census" the census was to be "...every living person who abode in every house on the night of Sunday the third day of April one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one..."

It would seem that Canada and England used different rules for determining who shall be enumerated where. That is how Annie can be in two widely separated places almost on the same day.

Of course, in the 30 minutes before I was to give the presentation I was madly creating a new slide for the assumptions section since this assumption of how the Canadian censuses were taken really bit me!

The Challenge of Finding the "Truth"

When we are doing research for ourselves or for a client, one of the challenges that we must tease out of a story is the truth of what happened rather than what was told to us. Here is part of a story that was told within my own family:

"My Aunt Libby had married a Baptist minister and gone to live with him in China to convert the heathen. He must have been one stern man for he had his wife completely cowed. She never made a move without his express orders. So accustomed was she to obeying his every wish, that when they returned after many years to serve a church community in New York city, she was rocked right out of her sense, because he was struck and killed by an auto while crossing a busy New York street. I suppose that after his lengthy China mission, he had not adapted to the great difference in living speeds."

McMullen, Frances Mary Howe (Chipman). "Fran McMullen's Correspondence - Aunt Libby." MS. Mississauga, Ontario, 1936-1987. Privately held by Ken McKinlay, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Ottawa, Ontario, 2018.

There are a few other facts included in the rest of story about Aunt Libby:

• Her name is Elizabeth Chipman
• She was born in 1837
• She was the daughter of Wm Henry Chipman and Sophia Cogswell
• She married Robert Somerville in 1865
• Robert Somerville was a Baptist minister

I wanted to know if the story about Aunt Libby's, my 2nd great-grandaunt, husband was accurate and he was killed while crossing the street.

I first needed to check some of the basic facts so I started with the Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics site to see if they had a copy of parish register marriage entry. I was very fortunate that the Kings County register had survived and was digitized. However, the second page of the entry has been damaged and lost. But enough of the fragment survived to confirm that the marriage took place in 1865.

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia Archives, Marriage Registrations ~ 1763-1939, 1866: 7, 20, R M Somerville-Elizabeth Chipman; digital images, Nova Scotia Archives, "1866 Marriages in Kings County," Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics (https://novascotiagenealogy.com/ : accessed 26 Jan 2013).

As you can see, the marriage took place on 13 Sep 1865 in Cornwallis (Kings County, Nova Scotia) between R^t M Somerville and Elisabeth Chipman. With an age of 27 years at the time of the marriage, her birth year is about 1838. Elizabeth's death registration in 1924 in Nova Scotia listed her parents as Wm Henry Chipman and Miss Cogswell according to the informant, her brother Ross Chipman. So far, so good.

The next step was to find out when Robert died.

According to the story, he died in New York City. I know that Ancestry has the "New York, New York, Extracted Death Index, 1862-1948" collection available but Ancestry states that the indices were prepared by the Italian Genealogical Group and the German Genealogy Group. I know that the Italian Genealogical Group has a web site and a number of freely available databases. So let's go to where Ancestry got the index.

As search for Robert Somerville with a death range from 1865 to 1924 returns two matches but the ages don't quite line up. I searched again but this time looking for last names that "sounds like" Somerville. Four names come back this time including a "Robert M Sommerville", age 83 years, dying 3 Feb 1920 in Manhattan and recorded on certificate 5023. This might be the person we are looking for.

Since the 1920 Federal census of the United States took place on 1 Jan 1920, I should be able to find him there along with his wife Elizabeth.

1920 U.S. census, New York County, New York, population schedule, New York City - Manhatten Borough, enumeration district (ED) 445, sheet 1A, dwelling 1, family 5, Robert Sommerville; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com/ : accessed 28 Jan 2013); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T625, roll 1194.

There he appears to be with his wife living at 327 West 56th Street in Manhattan.

Let us proceed with the assumption this is the right Robert M Sommerville/Somerville. Can we get a copy of his death certificate without having to write a check? A check of the catalog on FamilySearch shows that they have a "New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949" collection. Since he died in 1920 we should be able to find him there.

Screenshot of FamilySearch results for Robert Sommerville, retrieved 23 Sep 2018

And we do but no image is available from home so I will need to visit my local Family History Center to see the image but which microfilm and is it digitized? The "Citing this Record" section states "...FHL microfilm 2,021,133" and a check of the catalog for that film tells me that the "Death certificates (Manhattan, New York), 1919-1948" microfilms have been digitized.

A little while later and after a bit of looking through the images I finally found his death registration. Only one problem...according to the certificate he didn't die due to an automobile accident but from lobar pneumonia.

New York, New York County, New York,  "Death certificates (Manhattan, New York), 1919-1948," (Municipal Archives, New York), 1920, p. 5023, Robert McGowen Sommmerville; FHL microfilm 2,021,133. Cit. Date: 18 May 2018.

I'm not finished yet. Search for him on Google turns up an interesting find, the book "Covenanters in Canada: Reformed Presbyterianism from 1820 to 2012" by Eldon Hay. That book has been digitized by Google Books and parts of it are online to be viewed. Once again providence shone on me and on page 104 of that book it states, "Sommerville's active life ended in 1912, following an accident. In failing health, Robert Sommerville died in New York City on 3 February 1920."

So it appears there is some truth to the story but not exactly as told.

Recently, while on the way to a friend's wedding (don't all genealogists do that - drop by a cemetery on the way to a wedding?) I was able to visit the Bronxville Cemetery where Robert and Elizabeth are buried.

Photograph of gravemaker of Robert and Elizabeth Sommerville, Bronxville Cemetery, Bronxville, New York, USA

As they say on the TV show "The X-Files", the truth is out there. The challenge we face is to find it!

To All the Mothers on My Direct Line

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the women in my direct line that brought forth and nurtured their children.Without them I wouldn't be here today.

Jill Frances McMullen, Winifred Violet Warrener, Frances Mary Howe, Elizabeth Murdoch, Henrietta Jane Whitfield McGregor, Annie Elizabeth Starr Chipman, Margaret Stewart, Isabella McCulloch, Mary Ann Kay, Henrietta Jane Whitefield, Eliza Ann Wells, Catherine McKinnon, Maria Elizabeth Jenkins, Sarah Eliza Starr, Margaret Orr, Janet Campbell, Mary Smith, Isabella Birnie, Ann Rudsdale, Ann Pape, Susan Fair, Florence Bardge, Ann Fraser, Mary Foley, Jane Innes, Ann McDonald, Sarah E Pickel, Maria Waring Little, Sophia Araminta Cogswell, Thamar Troop, Mary McEwan, Margaret Houston, Margaret Pettigrew, Eleanor Maynard, Jane Philips, Sarah Howell, Hannah Baxter, Elizabeth Sherwood, Mary Ann Fowler, Mary McGown Dickie, Elizabeth Beckwith, Esther Fairweather, Jemima Sawtelle, Lydia Parker, Ann Osborne, Lydia Huntington, Katherine Chipman, Jean Allen, Elizabeth Handley, Margaret Homes, Hope Howland, Elizabeth Young and Elizabeth Tilley.

There are so many more yet I don't know their names but I will keep striving to find them.

Introductions

Welcome to Family Tree Knots. This is my blog to discuss those tricky genealogy problems I’ve run into either in my own tree or while helping others in their research. But before I delve into those problems I feel that introductions are necessary.

My name is Ken McKinlay and I’ve been researching my own roots for about 14 years. Initially I became interested in my family’s background because I kept hearing about three stories:

• On the Howe side of the family I was descended from a Loyalist; 
• A scullery maid on the Mayflower was an ancestor on the Chipman line; 
• The McKinlays came to Scotland from Ireland. 

Being curious and also a little doubtful about what I was hearing I wanted to find out the “truth”.

In those 14 years I’ve made probably all the usual goofs and mistakes a researcher can do. In the beginning I was just copying other people’s information without checking the sources, sons were marrying their mothers, and having census records associated with ancestors that were dead years before the enumerator visited the household. That consumed 3 years of my research life and I had to throw away two attempts at creating my family tree due to my errors and foul-ups. After that I turned to recording the information within Personal Ancestral File (PAF) and also on Ancestry.

My use of PAF lasted for about 8 years. During that time I was a “Name Collector”. I just followed the data I collected. It didn’t matter that I was recording the brother-in-law of the sister of the husband of my 3rd cousin twice removed. It was a name and I was a collector. My tree grew by leaps and bounds but several years ago I realized that I didn’t know anything about the people I was finding. I had discovered the truth concerning the stories above but I couldn’t really prove it to anyone else ... at least in a coherent way. It was time to change how I did my research.

First, I started to take courses from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies to improve my methodologies. Also I switched from PAF to Legacy Family Tree to record the information and to help me with writing citations (my weakness). Finally, I put aside everything I had learned to date and started from scratch.

You read that right. I tossed out 8 years of work in documenting my family tree. Now I didn’t destroy the documents but I did put aside what I had found.

I started at the beginning and this time I actually read what I had previously found, thought about it, and then recorded the details … those little (but oh so important) details such as occupations, physical appearances and travel. Suddenly those brick walls or “knots” in my tree started to disappear. Also I started to get a glimpse into their lives.

As for the title of the blog being “Family Tree Knots” … they are the parts of the tree where a branch was attached but the only clue that a branch might have existed is that knot.