"Ann" <joyrene@iinet.net.au> wrote..... > I am wondering if SKS would do a look up for me on the 1851 CENSUS. > > I am looking for a William THORNTON. aged 25 - 26 and he was > a Coal Miner and born in Yorkshire and hope that someone can find > this person for to solve a problem I have .... << PLEASE don't take this amiss, but you are asking someone to undertake not just a needle-in-a-haystack search but to look for a needle in a whole pine forest! Do you have any idea how vast a county Yorkshire is? The population in 1851 was around two million. And you don't even say whether he was actually living in Yorkshire, only that he was born there. So he could be anywhere in the UK! Second question - do you know how common a surname Thornton is in England and how many miners there probably were called William Thornton in 1851? Mining was a huge industry then. I should explain that, unlike the 1881 and 1901 censuses, there is as yet no national surname index for the 1851. True, it is the best indexed census of all apart from those two, but it has been indexed on a county and localised basis by family history societies and no-one has yet done the entire country. You ask the impossible, I'm afraid, unless you can be more specific. So don't be offended when you don't get many replies. Roy Stockdill (Editor, Journal of One-Name Studies) SoG Executive & Director of Projects, FFHS Guild of One-Name Studies:- www.one-name.org Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History:- www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does he will tell you, if he does not why humiliate him? - Canon Sydney Smith