Family History in Manchester

Ancestry.com

The 1841-1911 census for England, Wales and Scotland and are available on-line at Ancestry.co.uk. Free access to Ancestry Library Edition is available at The Manchester Room@City Library or at any Manchester City Council library.

The 1841-1911 census is also available on the following pay per view/subscription web sites, but they use a different set of name indexes to Ancestry.com: 

• Findmypast.co.uk. Free access to Findmypast is available at The Manchester Room@City Library (this does not include the 1911 census).
• 1901 census on-line (not 1881).

1851 census

The 1851 original census suffered damage. The 1851 census for Blackley, Harpurhey, and Moston is completely missing along with parts of Hulme, St. George's and London Road districts. In addition much of the Deansgate, Ardwick and Chorlton-on-Medlock area is illegible due to deterioration of the originals. There has been much work done by the Manchester & Lancashire Family History Society to retrieve information on some of these areas and the transcribed results are available on microfiche and on CD-ROM at The Manchester Room@City Library. A name index to this "unfilmed" 1851 census is now available on Manchester's 1851 "unfilmed" census.

The 1851 "unfilmed" census for Manchester, Chorlton, Salford, Oldham and Ashton-Under-Lyne is now available on Findmypast.co.uk and Ancestry.co.uk.

Microfilm/microfiche version

The Manchester Room@City Library has microfilm/microfiche copies of the census returns 1841-1901 for the City of Manchester, and some adjacent areas including parts of Salford, Stretford, Altrincham and Sale, Droylsden and Prestwich for some but not all of the census years. There are surname indexes to the Manchester census returns of 1851 and 1891. There are indexes for 1881 for the whole of Lancashire, Cheshire and Derbyshire.