Genealogy Chat

I have just had an email from 1837, offering me annual subscription to BMD for £50. Not having use this site before, how would the information on offer be presented to me, ie....like Ancestry...you have to trawl through many names that are the same as the one you are interested in, its Murphy`s law that the name you are searching for has several in the list, so you do not know if you have the correct one.!!!!!!! Help please Kathlyn

You can put in your criteria (ie birth, marriage or death) and the year(s) and quarter(s) you want to search and you will get the pages for those years - you have to look on each quarter of each year to find the right entry, so its just like ancestry's complete index images except that you have to pay and its a bit quicker to load the page. 1837online does have bmds at sea though, and some other things that may or may not be relevant to your family history such as a list of people who died in WW1 etc. nell

Many thanks Nell, I will give this some thought. Not sure if 'him indoors' would be happy with me spending £50 in one hit. The odd cert £7 I can get away with!!!!! Kathlyn

I don't like 1837 for a fee like this. In Ancestry you pay £70 for the year and look at what you like, when you like. With 1837 you are given a number of credits (say 500 for your £50) and each time you look at something credits are taken from your account. I find it very expensive. For instance last week I was looking for a name on the roll of honour (WWI) and I have the person in the CWGC, so I know who I was looking for and when they died etc, I put in specific dates but still the search brought up all those with the same surname from 1800's to 2000's with nothing to denote dates for each one so, I could have 9 H McDonalds from Manchester (for instance) and would have to look at each one to find the one that was mine, but each time I looked at one, credits were taken from the account. I'm not against 1837 - far from it, it has resources other sites don't have it's just that I think it's an expensive way of doing things compared with Ancestry. But if the resources are nowhere else except there and you want the info, you have to pay I'm afraid.

You could have a look on the site and see what's there... see if it's likely to be useful. Christine

Kathlyn 1837 seems to be offering another package as well which seems better value: 'why not sign up for our new Births, Marriages, Deaths and Census subscription package, which allows unlimited access for the price of just £65 a year. That's just over £5.40 per month. We offer the fullest transcriptions available online, covering every county in England and Wales with censuses from 1861 and 1891; plus two new censuses being added in early autumn will also be included in this new subscription package. Your existing units can be used for other records, such as our Military and Overseas records' I find my sub to Ancestry is best overall value, and the occasional £5 elsewhere such as 1837. Carol

1837 purchased their data base from gro I quite often find a B,D,M. on 1837 whilst being unable to find it on ancestry.Having said that I would be inclined to pay 1837 as you need them and not with a one off for so many units.