Clackmannan FreeCEN Project

Welcome to the Clackmannanshire Free Census Project. This project is dedicated to transcribing the 19^th century census returns for the Clackmannanshire parishes, and making these transcriptions freely available online as part of the UK Free Census Project (FreeCEN).

1841—We’ve Got There!

If you came to this page in the past, you may know that the FreeCEN transcriptions for 1841 Clackmannanshire had all been done way back in 2003 under the auspices of the County’s first coordinator, Laura Benoit. Then somehow “The Wee County” managed to slip out of sight. Only in 2007 did things start to progress any further, with work moving forward on checking and validating those 1841 transcriptions.

The first of these records were put online in September 2007, and the task of putting them all online was finally completed in November 2009. More than 17,500 records are now available for searching free online. Check our Census Progress Table for a list of parishes.

Clackmannanshire Help

To aid you in interpreting and using the FreeCEN transcriptions for Clackmannanshire, we have provided a page of Clackmannanshire Notes on this site. These include a map of the county, an explanation of the 1891 boundary changes, a look at the population numbers and a list of books you may find useful.

See the links in the sidebar for further selected sources of help. These include a link to the website of the Central Scotland Family History Society (CSFHS) whose area of interest includes Clackmannanshire. FreeCEN and CSFHS offer complementary help for those researching their Clackmannanshire ancestors.

Beyond 1841?

Up until now, all our efforts are focused on completing work on the 1841 Census. Where we go next has yet to be decided. CSFHS already have for sale indexes to the 1851 Census for each of the four Clackmannanshire parishes. These list all the records for a parish in alphabetical order of surname and forename, and also provide reference details, age and parish of birth for each record.

When we do move on, we shall once again be calling for volunteer transcribers for the Clackmannanshire project. In the meantime, if you would like to help with transcribing other Scottish Counties, then please contact me, or visit the FreeCEN Scotland website.