High demand jams 1901 census site as a million log on

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The first British census to go online, showing the family details of 32 million people living in England and Wales in 1901, ground to a halt within minutes of its launch yesterday as millions of people simultaneously tried to trace their ancestry.

The website was almost unreachable throughout the day due to the strength of demand, much of it from Americans keen to trace ancestors who had emigrated across the Atlantic.

The Public Record Office, which released the census, had expected a massive demand when it was published at 9am yesterday. More than a million users attempted to log on during its first three hours. The site, equipped to deal with up to 14 hits per second without crashing, received 10 times that number.

Undaunted, a spokeswoman for the Public Record Office (PRO), where more than 1.5 million pages of records were scanned to produce the website, saidthis was "a success story, not a problem – because it shows that people want to get on to the site." She added: "They have been waiting 10 years, or 100 years if you like – it's 10 years since the last census, for 1891, was released on microfiche and microfilm, but by standard practice all the records for the 1901 census have been sealed from public scrutiny for 100 years."

The demand reflects the popularity of online genealogy, with thousands of websites devoted to the pursuit. Though the PRO had doubled the number of servers available, it was still overwhelmed. "We think that if people give it a few days, the demand will settle down," the spokeswoman said.

The census, when available, can be searched by name, age, gender or address. Among those listed are the Queen Mother – then aged eight months – the comedian Charlie Chaplin, the cricketer WG Grace and the Lord of the Rings author, JRR Tolkien.