| Easy
as Pulling Teeth
Mark
Howells tells how to drill into data the LDS doesn’t
let you search for.
|
Household
Search Window for the 1851 British Census CD-ROM including
Occupation search field. |
When I
had determined that I had a Victorian dentist as an ancestor,
I was very excited. This 3rd great grandfather was the first
“professional man” in my family tree and I had
grand visions of finding out more about his career from the
marbled halls of some academic or professional archive. What
I discovered was that while my dental ancestor may have taken
an apprenticeship with another dentist to learn the trade,
at that time — the 1840s to the 1870s — there
was no formal education nor any professional certification
or licensing required to be a dental practitioner. My 3rd
great grandfather had a practice in Norwich, Norfolk but also
traveled around the county to the major towns as an itinerant
dentist. This “have pliers, will travel” aspect
of his career was fascinating but I was still searching for
more information about my dentist’s career.
When I know the occupations of my ancestors, I try to read
up on what the occupation entailed. In the case of my dental
forebear, the best books on the history of dentistry in the
United Kingdom have been authored by Christine Hillam of the
University of Liverpool’s Dental History Research Unit.
I was able to strike up an e-mail correspondence with this
expert on British dental history and, while asking for information
on how to further research my dental ancestor, I was also
trying to determine how I might assist this historian in her
ongoing research into the profession.
At about this time, the 1851 British Census CD-ROM for the
counties of Norfolk, Devon, and Warwickshire had just been
made available from the Family History Department of the LDS
Church — see www.familysearch.org/OtherResources/1851_British_Census.asp.
I told Dr. Hillam about this resource and mentioned that it
allowed the transcribed census returns for the three counties
to be searched by occupation.
Further, the 1851 British Census CD-ROM includes a Query function
under Search, Query. This function allows for searches on
any keyword — such as dentist. Inclusion of this feature
made searching for any element of data on the entire disc
very simple. Simple boolean commands such as OR, AND, or NOT
can be used to obtain different combinations of results from
keyword searches.
At $5 per copy, the 1851 British Census CD-ROM made an ideal
“thank you” gift and I sent one to Dr. Hillam
along with some notes on how to easily search for all the
dentists, dental surgeons, etc. listed in the census for the
three counties covered.
At the 1999 GenTech Conference in Salt Lake City last January,
I was fortunate enough to view a demonstration of the not-yet-released
1881 Census on CD-ROM. The employees of the Family History
Department involved with the 1881 Census project showed me
what the product could do and I immediately noticed that there
was no provision for searching by occupation! The 1881 British
Census search capabilities were limited to searching by given
name, last name, birth year, birthplace, and census place
only. I suggested searching by Occupation field as an enhancement
and was told that they had been forced to make hard decisions
about what fields on the 1881 CD-ROM discs would be searchable.
The Occupation field did not make the cut. Nor had the Family
History Department included the Search, Query function available
on the 1851 product. I was crestfallen. I had previously told
Dr. Hillam that the 1881 Census CD-ROMs would be as useful
as the 1851 Census CD-ROM. This was based on the assumption
that they could be searched in a like manner. I realized that
this would not be the case. How could I search for all the
dentists in the UK if the Occupation field was not searchable?
I was not satisfied with a “can’t be done”
answer regarding searching the Occupation field on the 1881
Census CD-ROM discs. The Occupation field was clearly included
on the discs as a detailed view of the results of an individual
search clearly shows.
The Occupation field was there, so there must be a way to
search on it. A few more inquiries of the Family History Department
provided some possible options.
Getting
To The Data
The Family History Department told me that they used the Folio
suite of products — www.nextpage.com/ folio/index.cfm
— to provide the data format and the search capabilities
on their CD-ROM products. Folio provides various database
development and search tools and licenses their products to
database developers such as the Family History Department
for re-sale to consumers. In the case of the Family History
Department, their Family History Resource File Viewer used
to view their CD-ROMs (not just the 1881 British Census) is
a licensed end-user version of Folio’s complete search
tool called Folio Views 4.2 — txdirect.openmarket.com/
direct/folioviews.html. Folio Views 4.2 retails for $149 and
the Family History Department recommended that this full-featured
search tool would allow me to search the 1881 British Census
on any data field I wished — including the Occupation
field.
 |
 |
1881
British Census, Lancashire Disc 1 shows a detailed view
of an Individual Search with the Occupation field shown
(top); the initial display window of 1881 Census detail
in Folio Views 4.2 (bottom). |
The Folio products are popular within the genealogy community
and are not just used by the Family History Department to
prepare and present data on CD-ROMs. Other data vendors use
Folio products as well.
Once I worked up the courage to install Folio Views, I was
pleasantly surprised at every turn. It installed rapidly in
under five minutes. The interface was intuitive to any Windows
user and in another 15 minutes, I was searching for dentists
on each individual disc in the CD-ROM set. I should have known
that since the Family History Department developed their products
using Folio’s tools, Folio Views would be easily adapted
to viewing the data on the Census discs.
As expected, you first must inform Folio Views of where the
data you wish to search is located. In the case of the 1881
Census, it is on the 16 individual discs which comprise the
Census portion of the set (exclusive of the National Index).
Folio views recognized the files with the suffix .nfo as what
it calls “infobases”. There are four such files
on each of the Census discs. It is the files using the naming
patern nnndtlaz.nfo which are the infobases holding the transcribed
census detail.
After selecting the correct file, Folio Views displays the
data on the disc very much like the Family History Resource
Viewer provided with the 1881 Census does.
The detailed census data is shown “as enumerated”
and shows a total of 764,853 records on this single disc.
Each record represents an enumerated household. Surprisingly,
Relationship to Head of Household and Occupation information
is not shown. These turn out to be “hidden” fields
which can be revealed using View, show Hidden fields in Folio
Views. This was an inexplicable design decision on the part
of the Family History Department. As anyone familiar with
the 1881 Census set knows, the user must choose to turn on
View, Details in order to see the full information from the
transcribed record. Why information such as this would be
hidden from genealogical researchers is a mystery.
After a first look at the data using Folio Views, I was ready
to begin searching for dentists. The Search, Advanced Query
is quickly locatable from the menu bar. Comparison of the
1851 CD-ROM’s Search, Query and the Folio Views’
Search, Advanced Query shows that they are nearly identical.
It is, in fact, the same software. The Advanced Query works
with simple boolean commands just as the 1851 Query function
does. Now I wanted to keep my search simple. I merely wanted
all records containing any use of the word “dent”.
This would cover all possible forms of dentist, dental, dentist’s
assistant, teacher of dentistry, etc. The query for this is
“dent*” using the asterisk as a all-inclusive
wild card. Without even conducting the full search, Folio
Views told me that I would get 4,752 records — in this
case households on the census — as a result of this
search.
After some head scratching, I realized that this would include
records which contained the common surname Dent and the place
name Denton along with other non-dental related results. I
modified the original query to “dent* not dent not denton”
which produced a much more manageable result of 722 records.
This was the search I decided to actually run.
 |
 |
Advanced
Query Window showing potential results for "dent*"
(top); detailed query results window from the
1881 Census — Lancashire Disc 1 (bottom). |
I did decide to change the view presented of the results of
the query by using View, Records with Hits so that the detailed
results returned only included records which matched my search
criteria. Now I was getting some interesting results. Although
there was the occasional Dentith or Dentry surnames, these
could easily be filtered out by a more refined query. One
of the returned records which immediately caught my eye disproved
the common conception of Victorian dentistry as a “man’s
profession”. The eighth record returned by the query
shows that Louisa Newman is practicing dentistry in Liverpool
and that her son is following in his widowed mother’s
footsteps.
A quick copy and paste into a plain text document put the
results of this search into a simple format from which Dr.
Hillam could easily extract any information of interest. She
could print out the information, convert it into a database
of her own liking, or do whatever she wished with the information.
Repeating this process on all of the 16 detailed census discs
which comprise the 1881 British Census soon produced a listing
of all dentists, dentists assistants, dental surgeons, etc.
shown on the 1881 Census. Thus was I able to fulfill my promise
to the dental historian.
What
Else Can Be Searched For?
Extra information which cannot be searched using the native
search facility of the 1881 Census CD-ROM set but can be searched
using Folio Views 4.2 includes:
• the names of ships
• the names of institutions such as workhouses and schools
• specific military regiments
• various occupations of significance to social historians
such as “prostitute” or “cotton mill owner”
• individuals listed as unemployed at the time of the
census
• the stock of housing enumerated as “uninhabited”
• farmers by number of acres farmed
• handicapped status such as deaf or blind
There are other possibilities, of course. Using Folio Views
4.2, you can determine exactly how many “imbeciles”
or “idiots” (to use the Victorian terms for mentally-handicapped
persons) were living in any village, parish, town, county,
or region of the United Kingdom in 1881. Perhaps you’re
aquainted with some of their descendants? Would you think
to look for your school teacher ancestor under the occupation
“Schulmistriss”? There are three recorded as such
in Blackburn. Folio Views allows you to view a list of all
the words on the entire data disc in order to find such possible
misspellings. This helps in determining surname variants introduced
when the householder filled out the census form, when the
census enumerator transcribed the form into their book, or
when the data entry operator mis-keyed the surname for inclusion
on the CD-ROM.
For the genealogist, the increased search power of Folio Views
over the native 1881 Census search facility will be most useful
in the case where all that is known is a relatively common
surname plus a trade or occupation. In the prior example of
a female dentist, by combining the search for the Newman family
(for which there are 290 records on the Lancashire disc including
6 Louisa Newmans) with their profession of dentist (for which
there are 514 records), the single Newman family of dentists
in Lancashire is quickly identified by Folio Views.
Other Uses of Folio Views
The 1881 Census CD-ROM set was created by the Family History
Department with genealogists in mind. Its value to local historians
and other social scientists with an eye on the past was necessarily
limited by the native search capabilities included in the
product. With Folio Views, not only can these specialists
obtain valuable research results from the 1881 Census, but
family historians can also extend their reach into the data.
Folio Views 4.2 can be used to easily extract data from other
Family History Department products such as the Vital Records
Indexes for the British Isles and North America, among others.
Regardless of what search capabilities are provided with these
products, Folio Views will allow for additional and more complex
query results.
With the Family History Department’s continued use of
the Folio suite of database tools and the expected release
of the 1880 US Census on CD-ROM, those of us with US research
may look forward to applying Folio Views to the 1880 Census
discs as well. No longer limited by the search tool which
comes with the data, users of Folio Views will be able to
search for any combination of data elements they choose. I
wonder how many dentists were in Poughkepsie in 1880?
Mark
Howells flosses daily and can be contacted by e-mail at markhow@oz.net.
Mark is the Chairman of the Norfolk Family History Society.
See www.oz.net/~markhow/writing/
.
This
article originally appeared in the January/February 2000 issue
of Family Chronicle.
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