Where did they come from?
I’m researching the Lewises who appear in the 1851 census in Liverpool, Lancashire or nearby areas, such as Everton.
I downloaded 554 records from FamilySearch, which I entered into a spreadsheet. I’m working my way through these and other census entries, trying to match up as many as I can with baptism and marriage records.
Liverpool was growing fast at this time. People flooded into the city to work, and many Irish fled across the sea to Liverpool, escaping famine. I thought it would be interesting to analyse where those who appeared in the 1851 Liverpool census were born. You can see the chart at the top of this post. Here is another view of the figures:
Almost a quarter of the Lewises in Liverpool at this time were born in Wales. They came from all parts of the country, not just the north. Several were from Anglesey. A smaller number were refugees from Ireland and only a couple were born in Scotland. This reflects more the fact that the surname, Lewis, is less prevalent in those countries than on the percentage of the Liverpool population who came from Ireland or Scotland.
As well as Lewises born in various English counties, some birthplaces were more unusual – one was ‘at sea’, a couple were in America, and one was the West Indies.
There are many individuals in the census who are not with their family. These are typically young women in service and young men in lodging houses. Many of them have the same name and similar years of birth. It will be extremely difficult to identify the families they belong to with any degree of confidence.
If you are ‘missing’ Lewis family members from the 1851 census in the location you expect them to be, it could be worth looking through the Liverpool data once it has been uploaded to our Genealogies section. This is especially true if they are from Wales. Perhaps you’ll find them in Liverpool?
