MIDLOTHIAN-L Archives

From: "Roger Kelly" <>
Subject: [MLN] Census beware!
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 02:44:50 -0000

Tonight I was at New Register House with others from the Scottish Genealogy Society. It was a chance to look at the 1901 census for Scotland. We're all hoping to see it on the internet soon.

The 1901 name index is on the terminals at NRH. The index gives you an enumaration book reference and page number, and you can then find the microfilms for the book entries you need to look at under the Dome. Exciting! On the internet the index will give access to scanned images of these entries.

They say that rarer names are easier to trace in family history. I was looking for rarer names tonight: my CAVAYE ancestors. There would have been perhaps 30 or 40 of this Edinburgh- based family in Scotland at the turn of last century. I typed in the surname. Straight away up came long-lost Arthur Astley CAVAYE. He been born in 1853 and had disappeared after the 1861 census. But here he was in 1901, aged 47, a "retired Tea planter" (so that's why he'd been away) boarding with a farmer at Hall of Ireland, Stenness, Orkney. So far so good. Excellent in fact.

But Arthur wasn't the first in the big list of CAVAYEs I was looking forward to looking at. He was the only CAVAYE the 1901 index recorded. What had happened to all the others? Where were the Edinburgh families, the Leith families, the Glasgow families? Most of them had been in Scotland, of that I was sure. But I must assume that the indexers, finding something unfamiliar, and no doubt with various standards of script to decipher, have put down the name as something else. When I typed in CAVAGE I could see some of the familiar forenames in South Leith where I knew my CAVAYEs would have been. And there was a 17 year old Arthur A CAVAGE too, in Aberdeen I noticed. Perhaps a previously unheard of son of the tea planter I'd found? I looked up his indexed entry on the microfilm. When I saw it he wasn't Arthur A CAVAYE. He wasn't even Arthur A. CAVAGE. He was Arthur A. SAVAGE.

In our euphoria at getting to the 1901 census it's just as well to remember that the indexing we must use is very far from perfect. Surnames and forenames may be wrongly transcribed. And ages are error-prone too, since the age columns in some enumeration books have been ticked and crossed so much that the underlying enrtry is very hard to be sure about.

I suppose if it were all easy it wouldn't be fun.
Best wishes
Roger
in Midlothian

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• [MLN] Census beware! by "Roger Kelly" <>