Genealogy Chat

For none census information you really can't beat joining the society for the area you are researching, they usually have transcriptions that are not available anywhere else such as PR's, graveyard transcriptions etc. and you can usually get freeor very cheap look ups from them as well, most societies have their own mailing list that you can subscribe to and get further help off other subscribers researching the same area as you, here's a link to the list of societies/area's mailing lists.

http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/intl/ENG/

Ron
www.genealogyprinters.com

I know that at first glance an Ancestry subscription seems expensive, but it works out at less than £2 a week (you can spend more on a magazine!!) and for that you can use the site all day every day for a year.

I actually find Ancestry's BMD's quite friendly to use - especially now all the births are transcribed right up to 2005.

Kath. x

There is no such thing as 'Best Site' You can not expect to put in a name and get all there is about that person. It simply doesn't work like that. You really need to take stock and decide what it is you are trying to find, where, and for which period.

When researching I always have three sites open:-

First of all, Ancestry, which I use primarily for the UK Census Returns. There are other Ancestry databases of interest, BMD's, which I use as a back up to Free BMD, and Pallots, assuming it covers the area you are interesed in. Parish registers are there too, but rather sparse.

Free BMD is next, I prefer this to Ancestry's offering and it does now go up to around 1930, later for certai n names that have been submitted by 'one name' researchers. I use this first, and secondly look at Ancestry's BMD's which has always appeared a bit unfriendly - but thats a personal thing.

Thirdly, Family Search, otherwise known as the IGI. An absolute must for researching prior to 1837, and also very useful for marriages and some births throughout the later 1800's.

After this you are down to specialist area sites. Try Googling and you may find local databases which are of interest.

Ancestry just seems incredibly expensive :(
I didn't realise how much money I would have to fork out when I started doing this, what with certs and using 1911 census...naive or what?

I hadn't come across a Merseyside forum, thanks for that, Cynthia.

I think you can join societies long distance, some of them have members pages on their websites where you can access further data which might be useful, and obviously they'd have the experience of knowing what was available in local record centres. I'm hoping to do a mini tour of St Helens/Lancaster /Bradford in the summer, to try and visit addresses/churches/cemetries etc as well as local history libraries and thought it might be good to make contact with people in the localities.

Thanks for your help, folks.
Margaret

Don't forget all the free sites first Margaret.

Rootschat
Family Tree Forum
Ancestry Aid
For Merseyside there is a Merseyside Genealogy and Historical forum

There are some very helpful and kind people out there waiting to help you


Of course, there is freebmd and familysearch.com not to mention online parish clerks for some areas.

Lancashire and Yorkshire have the very helpful lancashirebmd and yorkshirebmd too.

Apart from that, I have noticed that if you want to join another subscription site, folk on here do seem to recommend Ancestery.

Hope this helps.

I'd say that Ancestry is well worth the money.

As for joining a Family History Society, it's something I haven't done myself, but it might be worth getting in touch with one in the area where most of your research is centred to see if it's possible to join "from a distance" as it were, as they might be more able to help you with local records. I don't know whether or not this is possible though.

Others may have more idea than me.

Kath. x

I was interested in the tip about subscribing to ancestry, as I'm a bit confused/overwhelmed as to the number of sites available and the different types of records they have. I've been toying with ancestry, had the free trial and was quite impressed. I'm also thinking of joining Soc Genealogists as well as several regional family history societies.
Those of you who've been doing this for a long while, which would you recommend? and is it a good idea to join my local society in Croydon, even though most of my ancestors come from 'oop north'?