Hello Jackie As an experienced user of the Ancestry website, I have learned to use wild-card searches for people who should, but don't, appear first time in the results screen. Ancestry's indexing leaves a lot to be desired and, if you have "many" missing people, the probability is that the forename or surname or age or birthplace or even (in some cases) the county has been misread by the indexer (I have come across cases of Leicestershire being mistranscribed as Lancashire). Try first entering just the surname, year of birth (+/- a few years) and birthplace. You may get a lot of results, but the person you are searching for may be there. If that doesn't work, try omitting even more of the detail - the less restrictive, the better. I have even struck oil by omitting the surname if the person's forename was unusual! Always keep an eye open for names in the results screen which may be misspellings of the name you are looking for. Sometimes, of course, the enumerator made an error in spelling or some other detail when copying from the schedule to his book; and this may be compounded if the head of household was illiterate. Good luck! Best regards John Ward. Message: 2 Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:27:22 +0100 From: Jacqueline Harris <towmed@telefonica.net> Subject: [LEI] 1861 census To: LEICESTERSHIRE-PLUS@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <47C8245A.6080506@telefonica.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed I wonder if someone could please tell me why I cannot find many people on the 1861 census for Leicester. Have they not been transcribed or copied i.e. Ancestry? Thank you, Jackie,