Day 16: Granite Hewer John Broadfoot: Living in 1911

Granite Hewer

John Broadfoot's Story

Day 16

Living in 1911 in Dalbeattie

1911 Census, John Broadfoot and Helen Tait

Midge's Office Examining the 1911 Census Record Headings

The 1911 Scotland census spans two pages. This is where I stopped transcribing last week. Today, I see why Helen Tait may not have been living at home in 1901. This census tells me that she had 5 children and one is no longer living. Perhaps she was in the hospital from miscarrying on the night of the census? 

Agnes (13), Hugh (10), Walter, (8) and Robert (5) are all listed in this last census while John is still alive. I know that after John dies, the family moves out of Scotland, not to America but to England.

I needed the headings on a transcribing form to decipher this census because it was hard to read. I used a tool at Flickr to make the crop shown here and a tool called Illuminate to blacken the text. What you are seeing her is how I work in my office with natural light and my magnifying glass to closely examine and transcribe what I think they say. Then, I enlarge each page on the computer monitor. It is a laborious process.