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!

My Top 10 Fee-Based Genealogy Sites

We all have genealogy sites that are our go-to places when doing any of our research. It has been a long time since I've listed mine so I figured I'd take a stab at it today. There will be two separate posts. The first, that of my top ten fee-based sites, and the second, to be published later, will be the list of my top free genealogy sites that I use often.

As with any top ten list there will be disagreements as to the order or why a site is included or missing. These are my top ten sites that I turn to regularly in my research. Your favourite site might not have made the cut due to various factors such as it was number 11 (or 12 or 13...) or I haven't had a subscription to it in the past year. A two sites that I make use of periodically that didn't make the top ten cut for me are Fold3¹ and MyHeritage³.Yes, they are useful but not vitally so over this past year.

Counting down from number ten...

10. The New York Times TimesMachine

In my research of a branch of my extended family that originally settled in New York City in the late 1800s the ability to read the death notices and even a few marriage announcements has answered a quite of few questions when trying to locate the next generation. As long as I've had the death date from a death index or registration more often than not I've been able to find a notice in The New York Times fairly quickly.

9. American Ancestors by New England Historic Genealogical Society

I don't have a current subscription but when they have had their free access periods their databases have shed light on a number of my early European settlers in the United States. Even their free databases have been useful to point me to documents I need to find and read at a later time.

8. Genealogy Quebec²

If you have ancestors that resided in Quebec then this site needs to be in your genealogy toolkit. They are constantly adding new images from various parishes in Quebec that you probably won't find any where else. They are also the home of the Drouin Collection Records. Yes, the Drouin Collection is available on other sites but Genealogy Quebec I consider the master source and all others will be behind the times when it comes to new additions. The site also has The LAFRANCE collection with early Quebec parish records starting from 1621. There is also a large obituary collection and a notarized documents collection. If that's not enough they have a collection of marriage and deaths records recorded in Quebec between 1926 and 1997 collected by the provincial health services.

7. The National Archives at Kew, England

The National Archives (TNA) in England (not to be confused with the other national archives around the world) has both free and fee based access to records. With the restrictions in place due to COVID-19 The National Archives has opened up their digital record downloads for free when normally some of these records could only be retrieved for free at their site or by paying a nominal fee. That is why they are in this list and not in my top ten free list. That said, this site is an important one for my British Isles and early Canadian research. Why Canadian? Prior to Confederation, many of the records headed back to England for government use and storage and thus ended in TNA. If you have come across WO or AO record mentions in your Loyalist research, those are collections originally held by The National Archives. Some of those collections are also held by Library and Archives Canada but it is always good to check the TNA site too.

6. General Register Office of England and Wales

We are all probably familiar with the various England and Wales birth, marriage, and death (BMD) indexes available on many genealogy sites. However, in order to make sure you have the right person you really need to order the certificate and, for England and Wales, this is the place to do it. It isn't inexpensive, £11 for a BMD certificate sent by post, but they do offer £7 for a PDF of a birth (1837-1919) or death certificate (1837-1957) sent by e-mail. One new feature is when you search the birth index on the GRO site the mother's maiden surname is now provided in the results. This can save you money or even provide a clue that helps you in your research without paying a penny.

5. GenealogyBank

This newspaper site is invaluable if you have branches of your tree that lived in the United States of America. This site has digitized newspapers that can't be found on other sites. In addition to digitized newspapers, some going back to the early 1700s, the site has a searchable copy of the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), an obituary collection from modern newspapers, some digitized books, and census records. All searchable by name, keywords, date ranges, and location (where applicable).

4. Newspapers.com¹ Publisher Extra subscription

Edging out GenealogyBank for newspaper collections is Newspapers.com with the additional Publisher Extra add-on. Much like GenealogyBank, the primary focus is on US newspapers but with the addition of the Publisher Extra add-on one has access to a number of Canadian newspapers too. The Canadian newspapers are heavy on the western side of Canada especially British Columbia but any indexed and searchable Canadian newspaper collection is a good thing in my books. Newspapers.com also has newspapers from Australia, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Panama, Scotland, and Wales in their collection. 

3. ScotlandsPeople

If you have any Scottish roots this is the one site you need to visit to locate the images of birth, marriage, and death statutory (civil) registrations, census returns, and parish registers that can't be found elsewhere online from home. Many sites will have the indexes of those records but not the images. Unlike many other fee-based genealogy sites that are subscription based ScotlandsPeople is credit based. For £7.50 you get a 30 credit voucher. The price for viewing and downloading, if you so chose to do so, is 6 credits for statutory BMD registrations, census returns, and church registers. Other records can be had for between 2 credits and 40 credits, depending on the collection.

2. Findmypast

Findmypast continues to be one of my primary research sites especially for the UK branches of my family. It isn't just because of their wonderful census, parish collections, immigration, and military collections that covers the British Isles and select parts of the world but also for their newspaper collections. With Findmypast I have access to English, Irish, and US newspapers from various other sites. There are also a number of Canadian newspapers buried in their collection.

1. Ancestry¹

There is probably no surprise that Ancestry is at the top of my list of fee-based genealogy sites. Combined with their record collections and DNA testing they have been my go-to site for many years. My primary cousin-bait tree is hosted on that site and I make use of the good...and not so good...user created trees to provide me with clues as to where to possibly look next for records in my research when I hit a stumbling block.

 

These are my top ten fee-based sites and they probably differ from yours. I'd be interested in hearing from you as to your favourites (and why) that I didn't include.

Stay tuned in the coming week or so for a list of my favourite free genealogy sites.

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Full disclosure

1. As a member of the Ancestry Canada Advisory Board this year I have been provided a free subscription to Ancestry, Newspapers.com with Publisher Extra, and Fold3. However, prior to this year I either held my own subscriptions or made use of those sites via other venues such as at my local Family History Center or a genealogy conference.

2. I was provided with a one year subscription to Genealogy Quebec last year. The subscription has since lapsed but my to-do list for that site is growing for the day when I can access those records at my local library.

3. In July this year I won a subscription to MyHeritage when I attended a Facebook presentation hosted by MyHeritage. I had a subscription in previous years but had let it lapse.

Researching in the 1939 Register of England and Wales

The most recent task I set for myself in researching my own family tree was to look for people in my tree that might have been recorded in the 1939 Register of England and Wales.

You might be asking, just what is this 1939 Register?

From The National Archives research guide they state:

"The 1939 Register provides a snapshot of the civilian population of England and Wales just after the outbreak of the Second World War.

As the 1931 census for England and Wales was destroyed by fire during the Second World War and no census was taken in 1941, the Register provides the most complete survey of the population of England and Wales between 1921 and 1951, making it an invaluable resource for family, social and local historians."

The 1939 Register was taken on September 29, 1939. It is important to note that it only recorded civilians on that date. Anyone in the military were not recorded. It also only covered England and Wales and not the Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Scotland, or Northern Ireland. Additionally, people that are born less than 100 years ago and whose deaths have not been recorded in the register will have the dreaded black line "This record is officially closed."

So where can I find the 1939 Register online?

If you have a subscription to the UK sites of Ancestry or Findmypast or a subscription that has access to the UK records on those sites then you have the records at your finger tips. You might have already been given hints that the records exist for people in your online trees on both of those sites.

So what is great about this registration? Basic details of a person have been recorded such as name, gender, date of birth (not just the year but the full date!), marital status, occupation, and their address. However, it is important to note that it does not state the relationship to the first person recorded for the household. This means that you need to be very careful about your assumptions as to spouses, parents or children.

Sometimes you will come across an entry for a woman where her surname has been crossed out and another name written above:

1939 Register, Durham, England, RG 101, piece 2742E, image 015, line 21, 17 Sunnybrow Avenue, Billingham, Durham, Margaret G Mitchell (Armstrong).

This might be a clue that she married. There might even be what looks to be a date in the first column of the date of the marriage. That is when you what to take pop over to the FreeBMD site to look for a marriage recorded in that quarter or the following quarter.

FreeBMD.org.uk search results for marriage of Margaret Armstrong to a "Mitchell" between Mar 1946 and Mar 1947 quarters

Could Margaret Armstrong's future husband be John Mitchell and were they married on July 29, 1946? In order to confirm this assumption the next step would be to order the marriage registration document from the General Register Office of England and Wales for a cost of £11 and wait a few weeks for it to be delivered via postal mail.

About that black line I mentioned when you find "This record is officially closed." That too can provide you with clues. Could it be that under the black line is a name of a child? Well if you found the record on Ancestry then you might want to check for the same page on Findmypast. I've personally found that Findmypast is more current when it comes for closed records opening up. However, if it is also closed on Findmypast then this is where piecing together several searches can provide you with possible answers.

If you don't already have the maiden surname of the mother then you will need to see if you can identify it via a similar search on FreeBMD that I did for Margaret Armstrong above. After that you can make use of the extra field that was added to the GRO birth index from September 1911 onward, that of the mother's maiden surname.

1939 Register, Glamorganshire, Wales, RG 101, piece 7260E, image 002, line 6, 118 Caerphilly Road, Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Harry Warrener.

For example, here is the household of Harry Warrener (my 1st cousin, twice removed), a master butcher, residing in Cardiff, Wales. Residing in the same residence are:

• Marcia Warrener: most likely his wife since I know he married a Marcia Andrew from other records
• Florence Andrew: quite possibly Marcia's mother
• Anne Warrener: most likely his daughter since I already have her in a baptism document. With her surname crossed out and Hanks written above it would seem that she married a "Hanks".
• Unknown 1
• Unknown 2

The question is, could these two lines that are still sealed be additional children of Harry and Marcia? Or could they be lodgers?

For that we can use any of the sites that have a copy of the GRO birth index. In this case, I'm using FreeBMD. Here is the screen shot of the search I used. I'm not even restricting the location where the birth was registered or the date range.

Screen capture of FreeBMD.org.uk birth search for children of Warrener-Andrew

As you can see only three children were returned from that query.

Screen capture of FreeBMD.org.uk birth search results for the children of Warrener-Andrew

I already know about Anne Warrener but it appears that Harry Warrener and Marcia Andrew might have had two other children. And there are two lines that haven't been revealed in the 1939 Register. Could that be them? The next steps for me, at least, is to create a to do item for both Mary and Harry A. to order their civil birth registrations from the General Register Office of England and Wales. Then I will know if they are the children of Harry and Marcia. Even the fact that the line for Anne is viewable indicates that she has died. Is there a death registration for Anne Hanks available through the GRO that matches what I know about her? I might even explore possible marriages and look for online obituaries or death notices that can shed more light on this family.

As you can see there is quite a bit of information and clues held within the 1939 Register of England and Wales. Not all of it is visible but with a bit of research you can look forward to adding even more people to your family tree.

Where are you Laben Mazey?

One of the attendees to the seminar I co-presented at the recent 20th Annual BIFHSGO Family History Conference had run into a problem where she couldn't find a death registration. What made it seem strange to me was that the person's name was fairly unusual. In her e-mail she spelled his name as "Leban Mazey". The known facts are:

• He was born in Llantwitvairdre, Glamorganshire, Wales in 1841
• He was married to Margaret Jones in 1867
• The last known place he was in was in Llanwonno, Glammorganshire, Wales in the 1901 living with his daughter and her husband

My starting place was Ancestry (just because it is usually open) and when I searched for Leban Mazey born 1841 only a few entries popped to the top of the list. His birth registered in the Cardiff registration district along with the 1901 census. But an interesting thing jumped out at me ... in both cases his forename was spelled "Laban"

So off to my favourite free site for genealogy research and that is FamilySearch.

When searching FamilySearch, especially when you know the region to look, it is a good idea to limit the Location the country. In this case, I restricted the search to only return records for Wales. I also used the spelling of "Laban"

And a whole slew of records were returned including the link to an image on Findmypast for his marriage registration ... not the index but the registration document itself (Happy dance since it saves £9.25 because it doesn't need to be ordered!). But it seems he was married in 1865 and not 1867. But we can't get sidetracked but that discovery (stay focused!). What is also found appears to be his death registration in Pontypridd district in 1905. Since he was found there in the 1901 census it is a fairly good chance that it is his registration.

But the only way to be sure is to order the death registration from the General Register Office and pay the £9.25.

Don't forget about checking the newspapers. The National Library of Wales has been digitizing and indexing a number of newspapers at the free Welsh Newspapers Online site. Sometimes you get lucky in finding a notice of probate, the person selling an item, a family notice, or you find out the person is not a saint but more of a sinner.


Yet why didn't we find his death in the FreeBMD index on Ancestry? After a few more searches I did find him on Ancestry but his last name was transcribed as "Mazet". Looking at the image from the index book I can see how it may be seen that way. Fortunately FamilySearch used their own transcribers for this index.

FreeBMD, "England & Wales, FreeBMD Death Index: 1837-1915," database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com/ : accessed 23 Sep 2014), entry for Laban Mazet, Mar quarter 1905, Pontypridd district; citing the General Register Office's England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes.

So today's tip is if you can't find the information within one site, check the other sites that hold the same collection. The transcriptions used for the indexes may be different.