What’s shown

Much of what’s shown here is derived from the 1841 census, that being the earliest complete analysis that’s available. While not perfect, we can be reasonably sure that most Kays were living in the same area as their ancestors – 1841 was before the advent of the railways made mass mobility feasible, though there would inevitably have been a migration towards the industrial centres.

How it’s counted

We’re showing both a simple head count, and a count of households. The head count is straightforward, the number of households is not. We believe it’s important to identify the households, as that’s going to show where the Kays came from. A single Kay living in a village miles from any other Kays in all probability wasn’t born there but moved there from somewhere else.

• The census counted people and inhabited dwellings. We’ve used the numbers at the end of each return to get totals for an area.
• But an inhabited dwelling could contain more than one family; this is particularly the case in the cities where houses were divided into flats or appartments.
• Individual families were usually, but not always, marked, but to try and count these families across a whole census would be a major task. Life’s too short!
• Besides, what constitutes a Kay family? A father and mother living with their children is easy to identify. But two children live with a family with a different surname – has mother remarried, or have the children been farmed out? A young couple live with a family with a different surname – are they a married couple, or are they brother and sister who have moved to find work? A married couple and their child are working on someone else’s farm and living in the farmhouse – is that a household?

So we’re counting only dwellings where the first named person is Kay as Kay households. This is, to an extent, notional, but for any other approach we’d be making guesses in many cases, some of which will be valueless. This approach is at least consistent, and no better or worse than any other.

How it’s displayed

You can choose how the information’s displayed:

• A simple count, either of people or households. Switch between the two by checking or unchecking the ‘Show households’ box.
• The figures adjusted by area. The areas we’re showing have different sizes, and this gives an idea of ‘Kays per square mile’.
• The figures adjusted by the total population of the area. It’s a question of which is more significant, 10 Kays in a village of 500 people or 100 Kays in a town of 5000 people? Probably the latter – those 10 Kays could be a single family with a lot of children, the 100 Kays are evidence of a significant number of families. In this context, looking at the density of households is likely to be more useful.

It’s worth playing with these to try and identify Kay ‘hot spots’. This may help you identify an area where your research can be concentrated.

Earlier maps

Earlier maps are based on our Parish Register Database. Inevitably, we are constrained by the registers that are available and whether they’ve been surveyed. As the database grows, so will the maps.