The 1911 Census was made available online on Tuesday of this week and I’ve had some fun looking through it.
So far I’ve managed to find the details of my maternal Grandmother and her parents and my paternal Grandfather’s parents (he wasn’t born then), but the other two are alluding me for the moment. It’s interesting to read a form that they filled in nearly 100 years ago.
While I was looking, I thought I’d look up our Troop’s first Scoutmaster. Although he only lasted a few months, he was our first Scoutmaster and I think I now know why he didn’t stay with the Troop for very long. He moved to a town a couple of miles away to be a ‘lodgeman’ which judging by the number of lodgers he had in his house meant he ran a B&B.
I also looked up two of the Scouts who were killed in the Great War. Aly (Alfred) and Colin Jackson were 16 and 14 respectively and they both worked on a pot bank (a pottery factory). They lived at a different address then to the one recorded when they were both killed in WW1.
It’s all fascinating stuff and it make the names seem more ‘real’. I now know where these people lived, what their jobs were and more about their families. I’d like to find out more about the Scouts, but it is quite a time consuming and expensive business, so the family records come first! However, I will keep dipping in every now and again to this interesting resource.