ANCESTRY
This page provides some pointers to selected records for Surrey held on Ancestry. Consulting those records using personal computing devices requires having a paid subscription to Ancestry, but the service is free at Surrey County libraries, including the Surrey History Centre.
Ancestry Main Page
Subscribers interested primarily in UK records usually use the following link to reach the Ancestry main page:
The main page includes a small pane (see right) providing direct links to Ancestry’s principal UK collections.
At the bottom of the pane is a link to the Card Catalogue which lists all the collections and has its own search facility. Entering just ‘Surrey’ into that facility’s Keyword(s) field is sufficient to find links to all the Surrey-related collections.
The following sections describe a few selected Surrey collections that have been particularly useful to ELHG’s research.
Note that the Census records for Effingham are presented in full on our Censuses page.
Electoral Registers
Link for Ancestry’s top-level page for Electoral Registers for Surrey:
The link generates this interface –>
In the right-hand pane one can choose the Constituency and Year, but it is not possible to enter there finer choices such as ‘Effingham’.
Instead, to home in on Effingham it is sufficient to enter ‘Effingham’ in the Keyword field in the left-hand pane and to enter the Residence Year of choice, leaving the other fields blank. One is then presented by all search results mentioning the keyword, the vast majority of which are for persons residing in Effingham, whilst a few will be for persons living elsewhere but whose addresses happen to contain that keyword.
Choosing any Effingham resident from these search results will bring up some page from which point the whole of Effingham in that year can then be browsed systematically.
Although the collection bears the date range 1832-1962 it appears that Ancestry’s scans have inadvertently omitted Effingham’s records for the years 1934, 1949 and 1962.
The years 1916-17 are naturally omitted owing to suspension of electoral registration during part of the First World War.
Constituency
Western
Epsom
(suspended)
Reigate
Dorking
Year Range
1832 – 1885
1886 – 1915
1916 – 1917
1918 – 1949
1950 – 1962
1939 England and Wales Register
Link for Ancestry’s top-level page for 1939 England and Wales Register:
The link generates this interface –>
This register was compiled at the onset of the Second World War with the initial aim of facilitating the creation of National Identity Cards, although it was soon after employed for other purposes as well. It can be viewed as the analogue of a Census and as a partial substitute for the absence of a Census in 1941 and the loss (during this war) of the records for the Census that had been taken in 1931.
In the right-hand pane one can choose the County, District and Enumeration District.
The best means of homing in on Effingham is to choose (in the right-hand pane) either of the two appropriate Enumeration Districts listed for Guildford RD:
DNLM and DNLN
These are codes for the usual two enumeration districts used for Effingham censuses, being the two components of Registration District 33-3. Each of them takes one to an initial cover page preceding the start of the main records:
British Phone Books
Link for Ancestry’s top-level page for British Phone Books:
The link generates this interface –>
The right-hand pane enables one to browse through an entire selected phone book (Title) page by page but this is not the usual mode of search.
Instead one would normally seek an entry for a particular name, using the fields of the left-hand pane. This pane makes it mandatory to enter the Last Name and to select the Country and County. Optionally one may also enter the Exchange to help narrow the search: for residents of Effingham the appropriate choice is
Bookham
Land Tax Records
Link for Ancestry’s top-level page for Surrey, England, Land Tax Records:
The link generates this interface –>
The right-hand pane enables one to browse through the whole collection of Land Tax records for a chosen Parish within the entire Year Range 1780-1832. If Effingham is the chosen parish then the returned collection spans the slightly narrower range 1798-1830 and has 264 pages.
The left-hand pane enables one to home in directly on the Effingham pages for a chosen year, by entering ‘Effingham’ in the Location field and the year in the Residence Year field.
Additionally this pane can be further specified to seek a particular named person.
Jurors
Link for Ancestry’s top-level page for Surrey, England, Jury-Qualified Freeholders and Copyholders:
The link generates this interface –>
The right-hand pane enables one to browse through the whole collection of Qualified Juror records for a chosen Year Range within 1696-1824, covering the whole of Surrey – the pane does not enable more specific locations to be chosen.
The left-hand pane enables one to home in directly on the Effingham pages for a chosen year, by entering ‘Effingham’ in the Location field and the year in the Residence Year field. The records for Effingham span the entire range 1696-1824.
Additionally this pane can be further specified to seek a particular named person.
