FMP census address search

[Caroline]

I was going to add to hijack Pet's thread, but thought it would mess up his own search and not be fair.

Out of interest to check it really did work, I went to the master page for Census and all I put in was Lewcock in the surname and Castle Street in the browse search filter box - almost instantly I got this:

http://search.new.findmypast.co.uk/results/united-kingdom-records-in-census-land-and-surveys?lastname=lewcock&addressstreet=castle%20street

Absolutely right - both the years when they were living there. They were elsewhere in 1851 and 1871. Jessamine had remarried by then although she was with Henry and Agnes.

I don't know if it made a difference because of the way it had been transcribed or because it was Firefox or because it is early on a UK morning btu very quick too.

Next I took out the name and added the Record Set filters for the 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 and got the 1538 residents who were there ordered by last name so re-ordered them by Record set.

When I used to search by address, I used to curse them for having to go one by one through vague house names/numbers when what I wanted was the people who might be there, so I'm happy because I can scroll through and look, but those who liked the old way won't be.

[Caroline]

I've just remembered something. They might not have shown up in 1861 - way back when, when the Surrey bit 1861 first went on 1837online, they were transcribed as Henry Do, Agnes Do and Jessey A Do. Jessamine was Jessamine Mason and the others were her son and daughters but with different surnames..... it was changed. My first correction of many for the Lewcocks

You can see how it happened if you're logged in:

http://search.new.findmypast.co.uk/record?id=gbc%2f1861%2f0432%2f00131a&parentid=gbc%2f1861%2f0002871934

I noticed in my investigations that there was somebody called "FAMILY ON A VISIT" listed. :D

[PeteW1959]

I can see the merits of the new address search in some situations e.g. a one place study, but for me, and I suspect for many others, I only want one address on one census. Almost all of my searches are done by name; I only resort to address searches if I can't find the name due to mistranscription etc.

The old way of typing in the street name and getting a list of places with that name (very useful in London if you are not sure which parish your street falls in), then a list of house numbers for the street you select was simple and efficient. The only time I had to open more than one entry was if there was more than one family in the house.

However I have tried test address searches on good clear images with very neat handwriting (less chance of mistranscription) and not found them, so they still have a long way to go to get it working properly.