The Brahams were fairground travellers, and as such were difficult to find as they would likely be in a different place for each census.
This was pre-Ancestry and searching the census meant a visit to a local Record Office to look through the rolls of microfilm.
However, if you wanted to look further afield then it meant a trip to the General Record Office in London. Whilst you could search the whole country, where did you start to look for travellers?
When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The Mormons) published their index to the 1881 census we popped down to our local library to have a look at what it contained.
Neither Ruth nor I have any local connections, we live in Lincolnshire,so it we just looked for a random family name.
In my case this was Braham as it relatively unusual.
Imagine my surprise when the Braham family turned up in our town as part of the Mid-Lent Fair!
This was an exciting find as it gave me the names of some family members that I wasn’t aware of.
That in turn helped when I tried to find them in earlier census after Ancestry started and we could search around the country.