In a message dated 19/07/2004 09:43:27 GMT Daylight Time, ianrsn70@hotmail.com writes: 1851 census for Easington gives: Edward 45 Catherine 40 Barbara 13 Edward 12 Joseph 8 There is no birth town shown for any of them. . If this is all the information you have obtained from "the 1851 census", then I strongly suspect that you have not looked at the census enumerators' notebooks at all but at an index to it. Researchers must understand the difference between an index and the actual records! Those who do not will (a) find the going very hard indeed and (b) will not get far with their "researches". Think of your index finger: it is the one you use to point at things. An index is a pointer as to where you should be looking for the full details and is no substitute for the details themselves. By consulting the original notebooks (ie microfilm facsimiles of them) you should have obtained: . The piece number The folio number The page number (but that is of little or no importance) The schedule number The Enumeration District number (again, of little importance) The address The full name of each person The marital status of all adults The ages of each person The occupation of all those who had one The place (typically the county followed by the parish) of birth of each person Whether they were "Blind, Deaf & Dumb or an Imbecile" or some such set of phrases. Their relationships to the Head of the household. . In addition by consulting the material at the beginning of each enumeration district you should get a description of the scope of that District, plus the formal statement of which civil parish, ecclesiastical parish, Town or Borough, Parliamentary Division, Poor Law Union, Registration District and Sub-District etc, the place came under, all of which could later be helpful when tracking down the location of other records of that place. . True, here and there some details may have been omitted by a less-than-conscientous enumerator, but no Superintendent Registrar would have signed off a notebook with only names and ages in it! . Am I being pedantic? Yes, probably, but being pedantic, being meticulous and knowing the meaning of terms so that one only uses them correctly, are all things which are absolute requirements if one's research is to have any value at all. That applies in any field of research, not only family history of course. . Geoff Nicholson . 57 Manor Park, Concord, WASHINGTON, Tyne & Wear NE37 2BU Long-established Professional Genealogist: ask for details of NBL/DUR family history research by THE local expert, working for YOU.