Genealogy Chat

Hi There Having had the pleasure of using the brilliant Scotland's People website to research my family for the last year, I have now started on my wife's family, who have some ancestors of English and Welsh origin. Where is the best place online to access records that will help me trace these English and Welsh records - is there a website similar to Scotland's People out there. I see you can get some documents via this site, is it worth it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks David

You have been spoilt by scotlandspeople!..(just kidding) You could try joining a site called ancestry(.)co(.)uk, you can choose from a subsciption for a year (£69.95) or a pay per view, you will have to look at options, and that gives you acces to all the census's from 1841 - 1901 and the birth marriage and death indexes, it also holds various other goodies. Im afraid there is no where online where you can view a copy of a marriage/death/or birth certificate for England and Wales and you will need to use the BMD indexes to find the relevant event and send off for the certificate for a cost of £7 either through www.gro.gov.uk or the relevant record office.

You can't actually view certificates anywhere like you can on Scotlands People. You can access the GRO indexes for births death and marriages but then you have to send off for the actual certificate. The index can be viewed for free on Ancestry so don't buy credits from this site just for that. For English and Welsh ancestors, Ancestry is definately the best site. Sam x

Thanks for the advice, looks like it's going to take quite a bit longer than my Scottish research took, are there any plans to digitise the English records soon?