Is there any chance of having the Scottish 1841 census to link to?

It's hardly any work for me - but it would be a lot of work for LostCousins members with Scottish ancestry who would be faced with two censuses and potentially twice as many entries to make.

This could mean that some members would focus on 1841 and others on 1881 - resulting in matches being missed. This is not a hypothetical problem - it's a real problem which has already occurred with the England & Wales censuses where some members have ignored my advice to focus on 1881.

However adding the 1841 Scotland census isn't going to happen anyway - because the only website which has correct and complete census references is ScotlandsPeople, and it's a pay-per-view site. 7 of the 9 censuses we use, including at least one from every country, are free online - it's important that access to cousins is not determined by ability to pay.

The good news is that if a quarter of your ancestors came from Scotland then nearly one-quarter of your cousins are likely to live in Scotland. They won't, of course, be descended from the few relatives who emigrated - but from the many who stayed behind. It's them and their descendants who were recorded in 1881 and will be the links to your living cousins.