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UPDATE AS OF JULY 1, 2011 AT 12:25 AM BST

The temporary site problem we experienced earlier has now been resolved.  Your patience was truly appreciated as we worked through this issue. Thank you and happy searching!

We are experiencing some temporary site problems. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause. Our development and web operations teams are working on the problem and we will have it resolved as quickly as possible.  Thank you for your patience.

UPDATE AS OF JANUARY 14, 2011 AT 12:15 AM GMT

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Authored by Jack Reese from Ancestry

In 2005 we finished scanning the UK Census collection from the microfilm reels that were available at the time and discovered that the writing on many of the images was very faint and unreadable in many cases.  Certified genealogist and then-head of Ancestry’s Indexing department, noted that as many as 730,000 names from 1841 and 1851 had been categorized as missing, damaged, or of poor quality.  While some of the original pages were known to be unavailable, it was believed that hundreds of thousands of these missing names could be recovered by imaging directly from original content rather than from microfilm. Knowing that these damaged records would only continue to deteriorate, we were determined to rescue and preserve images of these documents before the pages deteriorated completely.

In September 2005, we went to The National Archives in Kew to inspect the damaged 1841 and 1851 census pages first hand and found that using high-res, powerful digital cameras with low-light photography techniques combined with a range of specifications, we were able to reveal hints of the faded writing on the pages (Figure 1).

However, it quickly became apparent that the project was going to be more difficult than we had anticipated. The image processing technique we were using to make the script readable once again, required a certain amount of time per image and the “enhanced” writing was still so faint that reading or transcribing would have been too difficult and inaccurate.
 
Fortunately, we had already set in motion plans to deal with more difficult content that may require analysis of the effects of imaging with different wavelengths – also known as ‘spectral analysis’.  After a couple of days of limited success using the traditional image processing techniques, we proceeded with our spectral analysis.  For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term, HDR is the process of taking overexposed and underexposed images and combining them to get a resulting image that reveals more detail throughout the image – especially in dark and bright regions of the image.

Using the best forensic document analysis equipment available, we analyzed foreground (ink) and background (paper) regions of numerous sample pages. Within the first few minutes of analysis the writing began to emerge (Figures 2-3).

Encouraged by the initial results, we proceeded to complete the spectral analysis testing hundreds of combinations of light sources and light source filtering combined with filtering of the wavelengths reflected and sometimes fluorescing from the document.  The term ‘fluorescing’ refers to the emission of electromagnetic radiation. 

With data captured from dozens of sample documents from the collection we identified the most effective configurations for revealing the information on the pages within the collection. Given that many census enumerators were using different writing instruments, a variety of ultra-violet (UV) and infrared (IR) imaging techniques proved effective (Figure 4). 

After completing our analysis it was clear that no commercially available system was going to meet the resolution, spectral sensitivity, lighting, filtering, size, and speed requirements necessary to enable us to digitize these damaged documents. Determined to capture and preserve what information remained on these documents, we set out to build a bespoke camera – our very own DaRC (Document Restoration Camera) system (Figure 5) specially designed to safely and efficiently capture images revealing previously hidden information on these damaged documents.

To read more about the restoration work carried out on these records and to start searching them, go to www.ancestry.co.uk/Manchester.

Jack Reese is a Digital Imaging expert in Preservation and spearheaded the  restoration of the damaged 1851 Census records.  

By Claire Vaughan, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine

Discovering my great great grandparents, Frederick and Mary Bland, in the 1891 Manchester census at the Family Records Centre in London was my first real genealogical hit. That was 13 years ago and I’ve been a family history devotee ever since. But I had no idea then of the frustrating chase they would lead me on – and its unexpectedly simple conclusion.

Eagerly I pursued Frederick (born 1840 in Leeds) and Mary, née Barrie, (born a year later in Manchester) back through their lives and beyond using certificates and census returns. But there was one stubborn gap in their otherwise complete histories – a big black hole in the 1851 census where they should have been. I spent entire days in front of microfiche readers pounding the streets of mid-19th-century Manchester and Leeds, ruling out first the most likely and eventually the ridiculously unlikely, all without a peep out of them. What puzzled me most was that they were both missing.

My searches of the digitised census indexes that began trickling onto the internet were also fruitless. I bitterly accepted that they had fallen through the official cracks somehow, and in a way I was right.

The possibility that the census material is incomplete had never occurred to me. So I was shocked to learn, a couple of years ago, that details of more than 200,000 individuals on the 1851 Manchester returns were illegible due to flood damage.  Happily, advances in technology have enabled the deciphering of the water-logged returns and following a 14-year transcription project, many of those lost Manchester names are now available – and they can be viewed on Ancestry at www.ancestry.co.uk/Manchester.

Recently I accessed this recovered data for myself, acutely aware that I could be on the verge of solving the mystery that had dragged on for more than a decade. Typing Mary’s name into the search fields, I crossed my fingers, held my breath and clicked the search button. Several heads turned in our open-plan office at Who Do You Think You Are?  Magazine at the triumphant “Yes!” I yelped as my great great grandmother’s name appeared on my screen. There she was after all this time, living with her mother and father William and Jane and two brothers at 107 Welcomb Street in Hulme. It was a magical moment and still makes me smile when I think about it. But that wasn’t all…

Wondering if Leeds-born Frederick had also washed up in Manchester, I tentatively entered his name. Astonishingly he too was there, living with his mother Sarah and brother Richard – at 116 Welcomb Street. It took a moment for the implication of this to sink in. Frederick and Mary had lived across the road from each other as children! So not only had I found my two missing ancestors, I had also very probably uncovered how they met – all in the space of about five minutes.

I try not to think of the wasted days I had spent searching the 1851 census for them in vain. Instead I like to imagine them as children playing hide and seek together on the streets of Manchester, little imagining that they would be doing the same with one of their descendants more than a century later…

Claire Vaughan is Deputy Editor on Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine

AUTHORED BY PETER GIBBINS – ANCESTRY.CO.UK MEMBER 

When one evening the Ancestry search engine returned a link to some newly released military documents, I did not know that it was about to lead me on an amazing journey of discovery about my family history and the priceless pleasure of reuniting many living members of our family who were not aware of each others existence.

I had started my research as a retirement hobby. My Mother’s family had been researched by a relative, but I knew little of my Father’s side because much information had been destroyed in the 1950’s and my Mother was no longer alive.

Like many others, I started by obtaining parents’ birth and marriage certificates, then worked through the census records and was able to construct a male line tree going back to 1783.

My Father had died when I was fairly young, I recall that he was badly disabled with heavy scarring and parts of his feet missing – he walked with difficulty using a stick.  My mother said that he had told her that he volunteered in 1916 but was rejected and had never served in WW1, which, given his disability seemed perfectly reasonable.

The record on Ancestry showed an apparent WW1 military pension record link for my Father‘s name, which I thought must be some other person. I nearly ignored it, but decided to check anyway just for elimination. When I saw my Grandfather’s name as next of kin and my Father’s familiar signature in the documents, I began to realise the true reason for his disability.

Unfortunately, the pension document is only a fragment, most of his military records had been destroyed in WW2, so I did not have the full story.  I contacted his Regiment who supplied me with copies of their war diary and also found some other records at the National Archives at Kew.  From this research, I was able to assemble a brief summary of events.

In December 1917, my Father was sent out on forward patrol from the front line in Passchendaele during a period of heavy enemy artillery attack.  Shortly afterwards, his battered unit was withdrawn to recover well behind the front line, being replaced by Canadian troops.  Five days later he appeared at a Canadian Army Casualty Clearing Station, also known as the CCS, (presumably found by them in no-mans land) and passed through their medical system until being returned to a military hospital in Birmingham where he spent 14 months recovering before being discharged as ‘unfit’ for military service.

Therefore, he was entitled to receive the Silver War Badge (SWB). The records show that the process was started, but the award was never issued, apparently due to an error in recording his home address at the Canadian CCS.

For readers unfamiliar with the process, the well-known WW1 Star, War and Victory medals are Campaign medals which were automatically sent to the man’s home address. For all other awards, a notification was sent and the individual had to make a formal claim before the award was issued. So, he could not have received the official notification, and had decided not to pursue his entitlement.

I presented my research to the MOD Medal Office, who were most kind and helpful.  Initially they pointed out that, many years ago, they had publicly stated that no more WW1 awards could be claimed or issued.  However, senior officials decided that because the military system had made an error in 1917, which prevented a claim being made, they had a duty of honour to correct it,. They had a SWB made from their original die model, which was presented to me at a public ceremony at Olympia as the last ever WW1 award.

Unfortunately, other events that day dominated British news although the ceremony was widely reported in press across the rest of the world.

Following this publicity, a distant relative in Australia gave me the address of a previously unknown cousin in Britain, and a similarly distant French relative gave me another.

We found that we each had a few photos and pieces of information which together gave us a much better understanding of our family history.  From this, we were also able to locate some more relatives, who added to our shared information pool.

One family branch still eludes us. If George Arthur Gibbins b1868 married Mary Emma Gilbert b1870 or their son Arthur Gibbins b1902 appear in your tree, I would be delighted to hear from you (my Ancestry screen name is pwgibbins, or email  pwgibbins@aol.com).

 
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