Acknowledgements

4.  The 1881 Census

Unlike the sporadic bmd events, population censuses provide snapshots of all households at regular 10 year intervals.  You can view and search the British 1881 census data for free at the website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) which has extensive databases on genealogy.  Their search engine copes with variations in spelling and searches within a range of dates.  Unfortunately, the 1881 census was taken before Pollie's father was married and we did not know the first names of his parents and were uncertain about where they came from.  Even so, we were able to locate Charles' family.

I had difficulty finding Pollie's maternal family in the Chesterfield Library because of my own inexperience and variations in the spelling of their surname on different records.  The following example shows how the LDS search engine was used to find Pollie's mother, who was just 6, and her family in the 1881 census records. 

See Appendix 2 for a sample search of the online British 1881 census