These pages are a reduction of the index of census returns from 1841 to 1901 as available through Ancestry.co.uk. They list all the Eggintons who were reported as being born or resident in Staffordshire in those years.

There are bound to be individuals who I've not picked up by virtue of the names being recorded incorrectly. Ploughing through the data it is clear that spelling mistakes can occur either when the returns were originally compiled or when the transcription to computer was made and it is useful to be able to refer back to the original handwritten sheets.

I have tried to include all the usual misspellings of 'Egginton' using the search terms 'egg*n', 'egi*n', ege*n' and edg*n' - it was quite fortunate then that I found that the late son mentioned in Thomas' (b1793) Will had been entered as 'Egginter'. I have not altered any of the spellings as found in the Ancestry index, in case you want to follow up on them there, although I may have included a note to correct them.

In order to track the same person across the years, I have given individuals a code number for each census, their code for the previous census (where recognized), colour-coded families and given the relationships within. Other details such as address and occupation I have added in some cases.

The 'Year of Birth' data can similarly be incorrect, sometimes months were read as years, numbers misread, some must have been guessed at or lied about and the 1841 census rounds the age of adults to the nearest 5yrs!

My first ancestor to live in Wolverhampton was Thomas b1793 and his progeny were an enterprising lot, iron founders, brewers and beerhouse keepers, dairymen, hairdressers and so on but there were other Eggintons in the neighbourhood around 1800:

• Edward b1796 in Sedgley (not Hedgeley) whose son John was born in Wombourne (not Woodboron) and moved back to Sedgley. John's son, John Tertius, opened and ran the Chemist's shop in Sedgley.
• John b1802 (or maybe 1792) in Clent which was still in Staffs at the time - he was a carpenter who lived in Canal St in 1841 (at the same time a William b1796 still living in Clent).
• Joseph b1785 (the most intriguing for me) born somewhere in Staffordshire (Tamworth?) who in 1841 was living next door to our Thomas in Salop St - is this co-incidence or was he Thomas' older brother.

Are there connections between any of these families? The information to answer this seems tantalizingly out of reach - or do you know differently?

One last thing - the census pages have been created by Excel, they use frames and Javascript (so you might need to change your browser settings). If they don't display correctly, let me know and I will send you a copy of the original spreadsheet file .