Genealogy Chat

just been on a web site and never realised until now that you can buy all the census' on data cd's. has anyone out there bought them and are they worth getting? I've seen them for between £80-100 and they seem to be worth getting. Any ideas?

Carole x

I wouldn't recommend buying them. The ones that I have are just the transcribed version and I much prefer to use the ones on Ancestry and go to the originals. There are so many mistranscriptions, I don't trust anything except the originals.

No I wouldn't buy them either. I've got the 1841 and 1851 Staffordshire census CD's (bought before they were available on Ancestry) and I never use them. There is no name index with them for a start so finding anyone is an absolute nightmare!

They are the original images but try looking through a whole town worth of images just in case your ancestor may be on there...

Thanks for replying! Just curious

Carole x

I bought a CD version of the 1841 census from my local records office. It cost me £9.00.

I bought it because I had been unable to find two ancestors, born in 1832 and 1833 respectively, on Ancestry, although I knew from all subsequent census records that they HAD been born in those years and in that place.

I found them within minutes, despite having searched on Ancestry for months.

It turned out that the surname had been misspelt on Ancestry and one of the birth years had been misread. I would never have found them without the CD.


Amanda

Thats interesting Amanda, were they original images on the cd or just transcripts?

Carole x

S&N supplies provide a name index disc with their boxed sets and are fully muti searchable ,,and the 1891 London has all the original census,,and you can go from street to street...

Thats where I saw them, the ones I'm after are the Durham ones, but if they don't have the original images on then not sure if I would want them.

Carole

Hi Carole and Sue

They were transcripts and the CDs (there were also ones for 1851 and 1861) had been produced by the records office staff.

They were very user friendly. Because you don't need any known data to enter into a search field, your chances of success don't depend on prior knowledge, correct dates and spellings etc.

As I looked through the list of all the families living in the area, and saw the proximity to, and work relationships with, other families I was able to piece together a picture of life in the village. I also came across several other names that I had previously seen as witnesses on marriage certificates or as godparents in parish records. This helped me get a better picture as to who all these people were and how they were interconnected.

I found it very, very useful.

Rather than buy the whole set, why not see if a records centre local to you, or a local history society, has produced them for sale individually? In that way you can buy just the one/s you need.

Amanda

Hi Amanda, been out all day but thanks for that info

Carole x

S & N also host The Genealogist site. Have to say that their transcriptions appear to have far fewer errors than the ones on Ancestry.

David