Genealogy Chat

Cathy, I think I will transfer my Ancestry subscription to Ancestry.ca - my subscription to Ancestry.uk is at least three times yours!

Here in England and Wales, we cannot do that sort of search for births - not really Ancestry's fault as the indexes do not give very much info and I don't think Ancestry would be given access to the original registers. Some local areas do give more info in transcriptions but they only tie up partners in a marriage and give the mother's surname for some, but not all, births.

On Ancestry.ca, which is the one I use most often, searching Ontario births, for example, offers the opportunity to plug in only parents' names. I have found this to be an invaluable feature. I have also searched by date of birth, year of birth, county of birth, and many other combinations.....for the VERY reasonable cost of $40 CDN per year. Using the current exchange rate that translates to approximately 25.50 GBP. I've spent almost that much in the past week to look for docs on Scotland's People. Still, that's cheaper than a plane ticket to Edinburgh.

Many Scottish births and marriages from 1855 to 1875 are on the IGI (familysearch) so finding them there first can cut down on scotlandspeople costs.

Also, using Ancestry to find people on the census for POBs can also cut down on the number of results.

Also, try using the Advanced Search facility.

Personally, I think scotlandspeople is very good value for money. Even if you spend £7 worth of credits to find one birth, it is still cheaper than buying an English/Welsh cert at over £9.00 and sometimes even then you get the wrong cert.

Incidently, where on Ancestry can you search for births by parents' names? Even after 1911 when mother's maiden name is given, you only have the parents' surnames, which isn't much use if they are Smith and Brown! And English/Welsh birth certs don't give parents' marriage details and marriage certs don't give mothers' maiden names.

I think scotlandspeo

Have a look at this thread. It might be useful

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.page/board/genealogy_chat/thread/1284795

No, they don't. I was just pointing out that other data providers make the process a WHOLE LOT easier to get your money's worth. The new LDS Family Search site does have some Scottish records.

Is there a "more economical" way to search this database? On Ancestry, one can search births by parents' names thus eliminating unrelated records. I don't mind paying for documents but I strongly object to paying for useless (to me) information.