General Chat

If I am a standard member, why do I need credits? Everytime I look at something it uses a credit and now I only have 4 left. I thought being a member meant I could look at things.

As a standard member you can post on the boards, view other peoples trees opened to you and send messages.

You can usually make free searches of the records held, but have to pay to view the results.

The credits you were assigned on subscribing were a 'gift' if you like.

Before purchasing anymore, or upgrading, make the most of the free resources on the internet eg

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/
http://www.freereg.org.uk/
http://www.freecen.org.uk/
https://www.familysearch.org/
http://www.onlineparishclerks.org.uk/

It's always worth an internet search for records in the area you're interested in.

If you get stuck, post a thread on Find Ancestors or one of the other relevant boards, and members with subs to other sites would be more than happy to help. Just try to hang around for 30mins or so as there are often follow up questions asked which need a reply on the thread - use the 'Add Reply' button at the top.

Don't rely on GR to send you an email when someone has posted on your thread...it doesn't appear to work!

That's great, thanks for your help :-)

No problems - we try to be a helpful bunch of folks on here :-D

Among many free places you can go without it costing a bean are:

http://www.ancestry.co.uk - free 1881 census, they also make other stuff free from time to time
http://www.freebmd.org.uk - fairly complete up to about 1920, after that patchy
http://freereg.org.uk - parish records, very full and accurate but patchy
http://freecen.org.uk - census 1841 51 61 71 91 not complete (yet)
http://www.familysearch.org
http://www.1911census.co.uk/ You can dig the basics out for free with a little cunning and wild cards
http://www.1901censusonline.com/search.asp

You will be able to use a full copy of Ancestry at most public libraries for free.

good luck