'Cheap & Free Ways to Trace Your Ancestry'

Grumpelstiltskin

The family trees on Ancestry are sometimes useful BUT in my experiance you have to take some of them with a huge pinch of salt.

The golden rule is never just take what it says on a family tree without checkng the information yourself.

What can and does happen is someone puts a tree up that is badly researched and it ends up being copied by loads of other people who just accept that the information is correct when it isn't.

How is Ancestry useful?

Well England and Wales census returns 1841/1901

BMD registration indexes England and Wales 1837/2005

WW1 Army service, pension and medal records

Many London baptisms, marriages and burials.

Criminal registers

etc. etc. etc.

So if your family history is in either England or Wales it is the most comprehensive website there is.

( I must also say there is also Find My Past with similar information plus the 1911 census, but personally I prefer Ancestry)

NEH

Hate it when MSE merge a thread without an email notfication :mad:

and my original post wasn't even about cheap ways...:(

I am finding Ancestry.co.uk good though, we have finally tracked down a relative we have wanted to find out about for a number of years, so the trial has been worth it for me...My mum is over the moon

Grumpelstiltskin

NEH Don't forget to cancel Ancestry before the 14 days are up.

If you do decide to subscribe I think it's on Quidco so a bit of a discount there.

NEH

Grumpelstiltskin wrote: »

NEH Don't forget to cancel Ancestry before the 14 days are up.

If you do decide to subscribe I think it's on Quidco so a bit of a discount there.

Marked in the calendar already, did it like that with the DVD trials otherwise i'd never remember... :rotfl:


Thanks for the info about Quidco, trying to stay away from them since they fell from grace...

Essenchill

Is there anyway of seeing birth/marriage/death certificates for free? Can you view them in the parish registers for free or do you have to pay, otherwise do you only to have to pay to purchase copies of the certificates? Thanks for all the help & advice so far!

Grumpelstiltskin

Basically the answer to your question is no, you can't turn up at a register office and ask to look at their copy.

Having said that marriage certificates can be seen in certain circumstances.

You need to see if the local record office or local studies library have the church records ( obviously you need to know which church the marriage took place in) if they do ( usually on film or fiche) then you can look at those.

Also Ancestry has some London marriage certificates ( up to 1920ish) online and you can view them.

Birth and death certificates are not viewable anywhere.

All of the above refers to England and Wales, Scottish certificates can be viewed and downloaded ( at a cost ) from Scotlands People website.,

Essenchill

I did think they would be available for free, but it's worth checking these things! (I'm in England and not near London, I don't think my family has links to London as yet either!). Thanks very much for confirming this.

Grumpelstiltskin

If your research is in Lancashire there is this website.

http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/

Coverage is patchy as they rely on volunteers to transcribe records but it's always worth looking at.

RAS

Essenchill wrote: »

Is there anyway of seeing birth/marriage/death certificates for free? Can you view them in the parish registers for free or do you have to pay, otherwise do you only to have to pay to purchase copies of the certificates? Thanks for all the help & advice so far!

No.. and yes .. and no.

In England and Wales, you can not see copies of birth death and marriage certificates (state records) for free. You need to ask the local Registry Office and pay the required fee.

But you can see copies of baptismal, marriage and burial records (sometimes grave records) for free. Most counties have local family history libraries with local information and sometimes national information.

Obviously if you are looking at 19th century records for rural areas and smaller towns, the chances are that most people were baptised locally, many married in the local church and are buried locally, so their records are available. As a rule baptismal and burial records are available for all denominations but marriages only for CofE; non-conformists tended to marry in their own chapel, with the registrar attending once this was legalised.

In a major city by the mid 20th century, you are not going to be as lucky.

If you know roughly where they come and use free publically available information like St Catherine's Register/Register of BMD to find out when a couple married, you may be able to find the church copy of their marraige in the records in the library. You are not allowed to photocopy this but you can copy down the details in the certificate. You can usually photocopy baptisms and burial records.

NEH

Grumpelstiltskin wrote: »

If your research is in Lancashire there is this website.

http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/

Coverage is patchy as they rely on volunteers to transcribe records but it's always worth looking at.

Thanks, one part of my family come from there so may need something like that once i get far enough back!