THE 1841-1901 CENSUSES OF WALES

Householder's Schedules were specially printed with instructions and column headings in Welsh for each of the censuses from 1841-1901 (the extract above is from the one for the 1851 Census). They were issued where appropriate to Welsh-speaking households to be completed in Welsh. The enumerator then copied the details into the Enumerator's Book in English and that is what family history researchers are able to access. In some cases, the combination of ambiguous handwriting and an enumerator not fully conversant in Welsh, led to inaccuracies.

For example, in 1871 the webmaster's great-grandfather's birthplace is shown in the Enumerators Book as "Quay Nenye" in Cardiganshire. He had undoubtedly completed the schedule in Welsh (by the 1891 census he is shown as speaking English as well), and entered his birthplace either wholly in Welsh as "Cei Newydd" or in a mixture of English and Welsh as "Quay Newydd". However, the enumerator failed to recognise "Newydd" which would have enabled him to translate 'Where Born' into English correctly, as "New Quay".

THE 1911 CENSUS OF WALES

The 1911 census is the first census where the Enumerators Books were dispensed with and replaced by Enumerators Summaries of the households he had covered. For the first time therefore, the original Householder's Schedules are able to be accessed, but this presents problems to researchers if a Schedule has been completed in Welsh and, like the majority of the public, the researcher is not familiar with the Welsh language. That is why this section of the Association's web site has been developed.

Firstly, this section represents an investment bythe Association in assisting and supporting Findmypast.com in their difficult task of checking the transcriptions of Schedules in Welsh, ensuring their high Quality Control and Assurance standards are maintained, and - most importantly - ensuring that the data is 'normalised' and 'anglicised'. i.e. capable of being searched for - and found! - by researchers entering the terms of a search in English. They have been provided with the contents of these pages for that purpose.

Secondly, this section provides a service by the Family History Societies in Wales to the non Welsh speaking members of those societies, and to family historians generally, as part of a Society's role as an educational charity.

Following the link buttons towards the top of this page relating to the column headings on the Householder's Schedule leads to detailed translations from Welsh into English. These should help researchers faced with an image of a schedule completed in Welsh.

Lists including the majority of place names - including local hamlets and the most common variations in spelling - are being compiled for each of the 'historic' counties of Wales. If the county wasn't entered in the Birthplace column, the census clerks wrote a numeric code against the place name, and a list of these Birthplace Codes can be found on the 1911 Census web site and on Findmypast's Knowledge Base for the 1911 census.

The sheer volume of different occupations make it impractical to provide all-inclusive Lists of these. Types of occupation can be identified by the numeric codes written against each entry by the census clerks and, here again, a list of the Occupation Codes can be found on the 1911 Census web site and on Findmypast's Knowledge Base for the 1911 census.

Because Findmypast.com have filmed the Schedules in colour, both these sets of numeric codes are more easily decipherable than on earlier censuses.