General Chat

I am new to this and when I do a search on the 1911 census it comes up with 300 people with the same name but wildly different birth dates.

Any idea what I am doing wrong?

Which site are you searching on?

Gwyn

Hi Bob and welcome. If you give the details of who you are looking for, perhaps we can help you. PH.

If you are searching on this site, there could be even more. I think GR restrict results to 300.

Have you tried searching for a parent, or sibling or child? Sometimes if one of them has a less common name you can find them and the page will have the info you want, at least on FMP. I have found a few that way when I couldnt find them by looking for their own name.

Huia.

I have the name and the DOB but the search still gives me DOB's not related to the one I entered.

That is certainly strange, Bob. I dont think I have had that problem. Perhaps you can ask GR why it does that.

Huia.

Bob, as Prickly Holly suggested, if you give us the name and d.o.b. and even the p.o.b. I for one could look on findmypast and somebody else might look on ancestry for you.

We could even look on here to see if we get the same results that you are getting, so we will know if it is a fault of the site. I have just tried with one of my gt gt grandfathers, and gave +/- 4 years of his birth date. All the ones that came up were within that range.

Huia.

Another thing, the year of birth given on the census might not be correct, as the sites just go by the age on census night, so could be out by a year if the person has not had their birthday that year. Not to mention the fact that adults sometimes decided to make themselves older or younger for whatever reason, or the head of the household might not have had an exact idea of the ages of his children. This is why we say use +/- a few years.

Huia.