Hiding from the Census-Taker

I am lucky to have all branches of my ancestry neatly placed in Canada, the UK or the US for the majority of the 19th century.  This almost guarantees that archival materials and vital statistics will be in English or French so I can read them, and that they were someplace which conducted a decennial census (every ten years).  Censuses are only as accurate as the information given to the enumerator, and then only as accurate as the enumerator's transcriptions of the information first into the original form from each household and then copied into the schedule books of all the houses in the neighbourhood.  (Further room for error is then introduced when the schedules are indexed for computerised searching.)

Census books are available on-line (often for a fee) from 1790-1930 for the US, from 1851-1916 for Canada, and from 1841-1911 for the UK, so I have the opportunity to track down my family at least every decade and see what sort of stories they were spinning for the enumerator.  Although the ages and birthplaces are rarely as specific as I'd like, the details offer a general guide to where the family had been in the past ten years, and I can then track down the local vital events registrations, church records, village histories, old maps and photos -- all the things which add flesh to the bones.

Which is why I particularly resent those members on my family tree who appear to have hidden from the census-taker.  I imagine them dousing the candles, leaping under the table, shushing the kids, and hoping that he'll go away.  If there is an afterlife, you can be sure I'll be ruining part of theirs by demanding to know just where they were on the night of 7-8 April 1861.  Yes, I'm looking at you, Elizabeth Heriot Adcock (née Walker)!  Because you were in King's Lynn, Norfolk with your husband George in 1851, and remarried in Poplar, Middlesex in 1864, but your hiding from the census-taker in 1861 means that I can't narrow down when or where George died, or when you moved south.

And what about you, William Charlton, upstanding resident of Bedford, church-goer and Inland Revenue Officer, as you told the census-taker that the only people in your house in 1861 were you and your housekeeper, Harriet Ripper?  What about Walter, the son the two of you had in 1859?  Did he slip your mind?  Did you think your neighbours didn't already know?  You admitted paternity when you registered his death in 1862, even giving him your surname, and you eventually married his mother in 1863, but in 1861 he's nowhere to be found, not at your household nor anywhere else.

My great-great-grandfather, Jan Bootes...you were hard to track down in 1871, giving only your first initial (and the wrong initials for your wife and for your daughter's middle name), but you were at the same address just weeks earlier when you gave all your personal information when you registered your child's birth.  Granted, you were in England illegally, and eventually just assumed an alias - Johannes Schmidt or John Smith - which you were happy to tell the census taker in future years.

John Roaf, MA, QC, prominent Toronto barrister: you don't seem to have been home in 1851 or 1861.  I've been up and down the streets in your neighbourhood for those censuses without locating you, and although your widow was at home in 1871 and 1881, you and your family must have been under the table in previous years.

Harriet Mitchell: you were married in Little Waltham, Essex in 1842 and your husband-to-be William Clark was there in 1841, but you weren't.  Since you were born in Kent, were you still there?  If so, what brought you to Essex and how long did you know your husband before you married?

As I said, I know censuses aren't the be-all and end-all of research, but they do form a useful guide to the activities of your family from one decade to the next.  When a family can't be found in one census, there's a twenty-year gap to be filled.  Young children on the first census are likely to have left home after that gap, and families might have moved great distances across the country (or across the globe), without leaving a clue as to the path they took or where I should be looking for records of any children born or died during those decades.

And to my own future great-great-great-grandchildren, I offer an apology in advance: my parents will not be in England at the time of the 2011 UK Census, but likely will be here when the 2011 Canadian Census is taken, so you're not going to find them anywhere.  Sorry about that!

Two poems about censuses:
The Census-Taker by Robert Frost
The Census-Taker by Darlene Caryl-Stevens