Do You Need Subscriptions To Genealogy Sites?

Many new genealogists are under the impression that they need to subscribe to the likes of Ancestry to do their family history research. While this may yield some fruit in terms of accessing records, there are other options that are much less expensive and will often prove more beneficial. In this post, I'm going to weigh up the pros and cons of signing up for yearly subscriptions to genealogy websites and suggest alternatives.

The Pros

It's convenient. It's not always possible or desirable to access records in person. In the UK, most records such as birth/marriage/death certificates, ships passenger lists and census returns are housed in Kew (London) or at the General Register Office (Southport). As I don't live near either, it would take me at least a full day to find just one or two records. The creation of paid genealogy sites means that I can use Findmypast to search for individuals leaving the UK by ship between 1890 and 1960 (and search the UK census returns); use 1911census to see where my ancestors were living at the time of the 1911 census, and sign up for GenesReunited to search the 1841-1901 census returns (excluding 1881, which is available for free here) and connect with fellow genealogists.

The Cons

It's not cheap. A six month subscription to findmypast costs £54.95, or £9.16 per month. It's actually more cost effective to take out a year's subscription, which is £89.95, or £7.50 per month. If you'd rather pay as you go, it's £6.95 for 60 credits. This might sound reasonable, but you'd be surprised how quickly your credits can be eaten up. GenesReunited will set you back around £35 for a six month's Gold subscription (which gives you unlimited searching of the census records), so around £70 per year.

Not everything is available. For example, while I can search for passengers leaving the UK on findmypast, the records for incoming passengers aren't available and would have to be looked at in Kew.

The Alternatives

FreeBMD. Searching for births/marriages/deaths here is free, but not all records have yet been transcribed - especially after around 1915, when there are quite big gaps in the available records. Eventually, this volunteer effort aims to have transcribed every single birth, marriage and death up until a set point.

Parish records. As I mentioned in this post, searching the parish registers for births, marriages and deaths will often be beneficial as long as you have a good idea of the areas that the events would have taken place. These can often be accessed via microfiche at local register offices for free or for a nominal fee.

Local family history centres. Here, you can find birth/marriage/death records, census returns for specific counties. There will generally be volunteer genealogists on hand to help with this. Most of my genealogy is now done at our local family history centre and local register office for offline sources, and FreeBMD to pinpoint births/marriages/deaths to make these searches easier.

Do You Need To Buy Certificates?

It's often recommended that you buy birth, marriage and death certificates to validate your genealogy research whenever possible, and ensure that you're not barking up the wrong tree with dates or even names. This is all very well, but at £7-10 per certificate (depending on your requirements, and a whopping £23 for priority service), it can quickly become an expensive business.

As a means of verifying names, places and dates, there are alternatives to certificates. For example, if you want to confirm a marriage or death, you can look at parish records for marriages and burials. These are often microfiched by family history centres and record offices, and most will let you obtain photocopies of relevant entries. This isn't all that different to requesting certificates, as they are also copies. The cost varies according to the place in question, but you can expect to pay around 50p per photocopy. It might sound pricey, but it's a fraction of the price of a GRO certificate and will often give much the same information.

Using parish records. The big downside of this is that you need to know the parish in which the event took place. People moved around a fair bit and will not necessarily have stayed in one specific village (or even one particular county) for long. If you're not sure of the rough parish or date(s), it doesn't mean that you can't find the event in parish records. However, be prepared for a long and drawn-out search process!

Using parish records to find birth records can be more problematic as it was baptisms that were recorded. In some cases though, the birth date would be included in the margin or in a separate column - especially if the baptism happened some time after the birth. It wasn't that uncommon to have baptisms conducted one to two years after the birth, and this may have been reflected in the baptism entry. This won't always have been the case though, but it's worth having a look if you don't want to shell out for a birth certificate. Often, there will be much the same information included in the parish records, such as the name(s) of the child, the names of the parents (if both were given), the occupation(s) of the parents, and sometimes the address at which the child was born.

Related posts:

Finding Out Where Your Ancestors Are Buried

What To Expect From Marriage Records

What To Expect From Baptism Records

What To Expect From Marriage Records

Early marriage records can be a great source of family information if the father of the bride and/or groom was present at the ceremony. This will not always be the case though, especially if the marriage took place in a different county to the one in which one of the parties was born. Just to clarify, this post is referring to the marriage records in the parish records, rather than marriage certificates (there will be a separate post on this at a later date). Generally speaking, marriage records tend to contain the following information:

Names. The names of both the bride and groom will feature on the marriage record. This may not include middle names.

Ages. The age of both the bride and groom tends to have been included on the marriage record. In some cases, this may simply say 'Of full age' to say that the bride in particular was of legal age to marry without the consent of her parents. Most of the time though, it gave the actual age at the time of the marriage.

Occupation. The occupation of both the bride and groom should be included, although this will not always be particularly enlightening. It is common for this box to simply say 'Spinster' for the bride.

Fathers' names. If one or both of the fathers' attended the marriage ceremony, this will often be stated on the record. If they did not attend, the marriage record will usually list other people as witnesses. Usually, this will be family members of some description (perhaps a sibling, aunt or uncle) but the witnesses may be unrelated to both the bride and groom.

Marriage records tended not to differ much from marriage certificates in terms of the information that is included. To access marriage records, you need to know the parish in which the marriage took place to look through the parish record in question. A good idea of the year also helps to narrow down the search a lot. To find marriage certificates, you need to know the district in which the marriage took place but not the parish itself. The General Register Office (GRO) will conduct a search one year either way of a specified year if you request this (for a fee naturally), so marriage certificates can be easier to find.

What To Expect From Baptism Records

Baptism records can be very useful when conducting family history research, but what kind of information can you expect them to contain?

• Full names. This includes given names, middle names and surnames. It isn't uncommon to find that the name by which your ancestor was known was actually his or her middle name, so don't automatically assume a baptism entry is not relevant if other information ties in.


• Date of baptism. The date on which the child was baptised will be included, and some baptism registers will have the date of birth next to this (sometimes in the margin). Baptisms often took place months or even years after the birth so it is a good idea to look at the entries for several years after the birth if you cannot find the right entry in the birth year.


• Parents names. This will usually be included, but you will often find that only the first names of the parents are given. Because of this, baptism records are not the best way to find the maiden surname of the child's mother.


• Abode. The place of baptism (church) will usually be found on the front of the baptism register but the abode of the family may be included. This tends to just be the town or village in which the family were living at the time of the baptism rather than the actual adddress of the house.

Finding Where Your Ancestors Are Buried

As part of my family history research, I have trying to find where my ancestors are buried. Perhaps rather naively, I had assumed that I would take a trip down to the graveyard in the village in which they lived and find their graves. How wrong was I! Despite the fact that the two branches of my family tree that I was focusing on both lived in relatively small villages for generations, I only found a grand total of two graves (out of a possible twenty-five). Clearly I needed to rethink my plans. If you run into similar problems, how can you track down your ancestors' final resting places?

Find their burial records: The main problem with burials is that you must be completely sure where your ancestors would have been buried. In my case, several branches of my family seem to have been buried in cemetaries, rather than churchyards, which I wasn't expecting. In addition, they were poor and could not afford to buy a plot in a churchyard or have headstones. This meant that they were usually put in unmarked graves with people who were no relation to them buried above or below.

This obviously makes them difficult to find if you are wandering around a churchyard looking for headstones, as there clearly won't be any. Despite this, it is still more than possible to find your ancestors, but it will take some extra effort.

The best place to start is a local records office or family history society. On my visit to the latter, I was able to manually search through the microfiches for the years in question to find the folio numbers for my ancestors' burials. From this, I could then view the accompanying burial index (on the same microfiche) to find the date of the burial, the address at which he or she was living at when they died, and the all-important plot number. On another microfiche, it is possible to see who is buried in the same plot and whether it was a bought grave or not. For my family, I discovered that most of them were buried apart in unmarked graves, although one or two were buried together (not in bought plots).

To do this, it helps if you are certain of the year in which your ancestor(s) would have been buried, and which cemetary or churchyard. If this is unknown, it is a case of going through multiple years and burial grounds, which is obviously a very time-consuming process. Try searching for possible deaths on the BMD (Births, Marriages and Deaths) index (which is available at www.freebmd.org.uk) to find possible death dates. This will also give you the district in which the death was registered, which can narrow down the area to a certain extent. You can use the census to narrow it down further. For example, if you find a possible death in 1868, you can check the 1861 and 1871 census returns to see whether your ancestor was indeed alive in 1861 but dead by 1871. While this isn't a foolproof way to narrow things down, it can be useful if you have little or no information to go on.

For burials before 1837 (when compulsory registration was introduced in the UK), you will need to see parish records. These can be viewed at the church(es) in question but you will need to liase with the vicar to do this and he/she will probably expect some payment for doing so. As this can be expensive if you have lots of burials to find, try a local records office. They will often have either the original parish records or have transferred them to microfiche. It's best to make an appointment as there will usually be few microfiche readers on offer and they may already be in use at the time that you want to go.

Can't Find Your Ancestors In The Census?

As you expand your family history research, it is likely that you will experience problems finding your ancestors in the census returns. This is quite common as a result of mistranscriptions and the fact that old writing can be difficult to read. What methods can you employ to track them down?

Try different spellings: It will often be the case that your ancestors were entered using a different spelling. For example, my "Curzon" ancestors have appeared in the census as "Curson". It may only be one letter difference, but trying out various alternative spellings can help to find elusive ancestors. This also applies to first names too. For example, one of my ancestors appeared in one census as "Anabella" rather than "Arabella". Names may also be shortened too. For example, Lillian may have been entered as Lily or Lilly; and Arabella may turn up as Bella.

Look for other members of the household: If the above doesn't work, it is worth trying to track down other members of the household if you know their names. This can include siblings, parents or even grandparents (who sometimes moved back in with one of their children after their spouse died).

Use a broader approach:This worked for me when I failed to track down my "Tivey" family. Having tried various alternative spellings and searching for other household members, I had all but given up on finding the family. In desperation, I eventually tracked them down by searching for the family who were living next door in the 1881 census. I searched for this family in the 1891 census and found my own family next door (as before). It quickly became apparent that the reason I could not find them in the searches was because their surname had been crossed out and nothing had been written as a replacement.

Wildcard searches: If you are searching the 1911 census, you can employ a wildcard search. This usually involves incorporating an asterisk (*) into the search terms to get wider results. For example, if you are not sure whether your ancestors may have been entered as "Curzon" or "Curson", typing in Cur* into the wildcard box will bring up all surnames that include CUR at the start of the name. Of course, this will bring up a lot of results, but it can be a useful option if you are struggling to find ancestors otherwise.