General Chat

Hi if I wanting to look at Cenus records etc, am I better upgrading to the Premium package, just trying to work out would it just be an extra £15 per year??

Frances, the members who have posted census details on your other thread generally use other sites for records, it's a personal choice but before signing up to anything check out what is available for your money...for instance I prefer Ancestry because they have specific London records which are of more use to me.... but other's might find FMP better.

Also be aware that you can use free sites for a lot of things, eg familysearch.org

I use find my past :-D :-D

So do people subscribe to lots of different sites together then?

Most of the members who join as Standard members use other sites for the records ie census,BMD,parish records..

It depends on which part of the country you are looking for details of your family and how much you are willing to pay.

I use Ancestry and Find my past plus all the free sites.

The main FH sites offer 14 day free trials. It's worth doing that to see what they offer. If you decide not to continue, remember to cancel in good time otherwise they'll charge your debit/credit card.

You can access Ancestry from most Libraries in the UK for free. You may have to book time on a computer.

Platinum is £80 a year.... Unless you have been offered something different?

On the Registration screen:-

5 reasons why you should join Genes Reunited

We are the UK's no.1 family history website
11 million readymade family trees for you to search for your ancestors
The friendliest family history community with thousands of members will help you get started
An expert genealogist on hand to help you if you get stuck
Over 750 million names & a new name added every second


Yeah! Right!

Edit/Added And on the Home screen:-

We have over 550 million family history records for you to search. With that many records, one is bound to contain information about your ancestors.

The best low budget option where most of yr tree is in England and Wales is GRU with all its faults.

FamilySearch is free and has improved no end from what it was a few years ago. World wide coverage.

FMP is ( was? ) easy to use and has Scottish records.

Ancestry costs more but has various advantages. It has far more record sets than just census/bmd - occupational, armed forces, travel in steamships, London and other electoral registers .... An option is worldwide which includes USA, OZ and so on. These can help a lot in tracing people who suddenly "disappear" and in rounding out family history. It can be quite interesting to find a guy who was, say, District Commissioner in SW Africa. The free library Ancestry access is restricted to UK only. Ay also has q huge database of wills and parish records going back to the C16 and sometimes earlier.

For many people FH can be quite an itch and starting from a low budget it can become quite expensive!

If you take a "free" 2 week trial of any of them be very careful to cancel out before the trial ends or you will be stuck with quite a large bill. Same with renewal if you don't wish to.

Brilliant thanks, I've just tried setting up an account with family search but its not working :-( I'll see if I can find a website that allows you censor information

Frances you don't need an account on Familysearch. just go to 'Search'

click on this link

https://familysearch.org/search

ah thanks, can I ask you a question, its probably me, but how are you supposed to view the document thats there after clicking on the glasses??http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl as it doesn't come up with anything????

when you click on the glasses, a page comes up, look on the left hand side and you will see "view the original" click on that and a new page will open with an image of the register.... you might have to click on it in the bar at the bottom of your screen for it to come up.

It is just the register though, not the actual certificate, to get that you have to purchase it (from the GRO online or local office) .

ahhhh thank you, thought it was probably me ;-)

hi

you would do much better to ask these questions under "Genealogy Chat" where you will also find the wisdom of the late great Jonesy.

here is a very popular site which will get you started
http://www.cyndislist.com/

Census records were collected 1841-2011 with varying degrees of information. The census up to 1911 are public and so will be the 1921 census in 2021. The 1931 census was allegedly destroyed during ww2. There was no 1941 census but by some miracle the 1939 registration card database survived and will be available soon. Public does not mean free. If you want to see the census page you need a sub. Ancestry provide access to the 1881 census for free.

Up until 1837 Birth Marriage & Death Info was not recorded in any systematic way and so far as records are available they are based on church records generally known as "parish records". They go back as far as the mid C16.

From 1837 the government (General Records Office) issued certificates for BMD which became compulsory. They are much more accurate than the census records for FH purposes. The FreeBMD records are NOT records but an index to the BMD certificated records. These can be purchased from the GRO for £ 10 each. One of Labour's less known pledges is a big reduction in cost for non-certificated BMD records.

good luck

I think I understand, thanks for that