Find My Past and Ancestry

[autumngold6]

I'm already subscribing to Ancestry and am thinking of taking out another subscription. Most of my ancestors are from the UK. Would Find My Past offer me additional information to what I get on Ancestry or is it similar? Or is another site better?

I've signed up for findmypast for 3 months and I've found it really useful. It had some baptism records that ancestry didn't and proper scans of some marriage certificates which meant that I could see father's name and occupation. I also find their search better. My tree is on ancestry though so will continue to use that as my main site.

I use both. I find the search engine on findmypast much better and they also have lots of parish records available to view on-line, which Ancestry doesn't. however Ancestry can be useful for its hints on your family tree if you put it on (though beware using info from other people's trees on Ancestry as they are often wrong - check any suggestion or hint thoroughly yourself).

If you can afford both, I find it useful. The search engines vary slightly so even for the same set of records its possible to find something you couldn't find on the other search engine. Its a question of finding the strengths and weaknesses of both. I find findmypast better for more general searches (like census returns) as alternative spelling search is a bit more forgiving and easier to find something relevant. Ancestry tends to be better for more specialist information and for family trees (but you DO have to be careful and use the information from those with caution).

I find Ancestry annoying because when searching for records I get lots of US information when what I want is UK info.
Is there any way to narrow it down ?

@LadyEloise

I find Ancestry annoying because when searching for records I get lots of US information when what I want is UK info. Is there any way to narrow it down ?

Yes, on the search page you can change the collection from 'all collections' to whatever country you want to focus the search on.

Thank you

@AlphabetDinosaur
When I use the filter I don't get the option to confine my search to UK records so get lots of irrelevant US records. Anything I can do to limit it please ?

When you click on the 'Collection Focus ' tab or box, is the drop down menu not appearing? If it does you can click on 'England', 'France', 'Scotland', or whichever country you want to focus on.

@TheNighthawk
I'm on the Ancestry App and there isn't a Collection Focus box to click on.
It is really frustrating because the search is far too wide. All I want are UK and Ireland records but I'm getting lots of irrelevant US and Australian records despite being specific.

[quote LadyEloise]**@TheNighthawk
I'm on the Ancestry App and there isn't a Collection Focus box to click on.
It is really frustrating because the search is far too wide. All I want are UK and Ireland records but I'm getting lots of irrelevant US and Australian records despite being specific.[/quote]
You need to use the desktop version rather than the app, that will let you filter by collection.

Ok thank you.

I like find my past for school records, baptism records I’ve not found on Ancestry, plus the 1939 census... search teens flexibility is great on this. I also like the Genealogist ... you can get this for free with the magazine for a month or so at times.

It annoys me that Ancestry doesn't give you the marriage certificate- just shows that there is one and you get a date but not who the person is married to.

Ancestry does quite often give you the parish marriage record rather than just the GRO record, especially if you search with the subject’s parents names. You might have to search variations on spellings of surnames for the subject though, as scrawly handwriting can lead to names being wrongly transcribed.

If you only get the GRO record then you can also search for the names of all those married in that registry district for that quarter to see if anything obvious leaps out at you, particularly if you have the spouse’s forename (I use FreeBMD for doing this).

Thank you

I'm holding off until they release the next U.K. census- I think FindMyPast has the contract?
A handy tip I've used for U.K. births is to us the GRO search as it gives the mothers maiden name even with early births and sometimes you can piece together whole dailies using this method.

Good tip, thanks - I’ve only used the GRO for post 1992 records, but will try out searching for a few marriages that I’m stumped on.

Im not in the UK. Can i use the GRO website. Is the information free ?

Not sure if being outside the UK is a problem - you could try creating an account? You’ll need an account to be able to search, then you can buy any certificates. It’s about £7 for a PDF copy.

www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/login.asp

@LadyEloise

Im not in the UK. Can i use the GRO website. Is the information free ?

I'm not in the UK either and it's fine, you can still use it. I've ordered both pdf and postal documents from there too with no problems

Thank you