Genealogy Chat

I am new to this, but enthusiatic and think its about time I subsribed to one of the sites which gives you access to census, birth and deaths ect,but which one is the best. I like the look of the Ancestry site, but is it any good and is it worth paying for, i dont have load of time to do all the surfing I'd like to so think that one of those sites would be useful, what do you think ? Help.

Melanie - certainly don't start spending money straight away, and I'd not 'invest' in Ancestry dot com until you are really desperate. Use FreeBMD - although the index is far from complete you will undoubtedly get a lot of information from them. The Church of LDS (Mormons) have the IGI and the 1881 Census on line for free. Finally, the UK government's site for the 1901 census is quite useful, but beware of the typos. You have to be really creative with name spellings and be prepared to use wildcards to get a result - ie I was lookig for relatives called BUTLER and COULBY and found them recorded as BUTTER and GAULBY. There is a free 1901 decoder download available which if you only use a surname to get results will then sort them into households without having to spend money to view the entries. If you want more advice then email me direct - I'd be happy to help you out. Graham

We had someone turn up as Gas Gas!! Turned out he was John James!!

Graham I know I'm thick and old but I can't get this decoder thingy to work can you explain it to me pleaseeeee!!! Ann,Darlington

Ann I assume you have run the 1901FULLSETUP.exe file - so you should be able to go to the program in My Computer or if the icon's on your desktop to start the program? If so you have a button 'Show Browser' which will open the usual 1901 census home page. Do a search for a surname only (restricting the search if you get too many hits) on the male side - then 'Process Search'- repeat with the female side and 'Process Search' - then 'Show Results' then 'Group By' chosing Page numbers - you'll then have all the different households separated from each other

Graham Thanks will try it late as it will take me a while and will let you know how I get on Ann,Darlo

Graham I still don't know what you mean I can hear you going grrrr No I don't have the 1901FULLSETUP.exe file how do I do that??? Utterly confused Annie from Darlo!!!

Have a search around the WWW. Some people have transcribed censuses for their local area and put online. Some Register Offices have their index online - check through UKBMD. Do some WWW searches and have a look at GENUKI. You can buy some censuses on CD-ROM though often there is no name index. Many local FHS's have MI's, census indexes etc available in either printed form or on fiche. Even if you do not have a fiche reader you can always take them somewhere like your local library. I must admit that I am getting tempted to sign up to ancestry.co.uk even though I do not want to! You can extract a limited amount of information from them free of charge. You can search for a name in the 1891 Census and it will tell you how many matches. You can then qualify by searching on one county, parish or census Piece. This might either confirm that a person was probably not in a particular area during the census or even narrow them down to one area. MB

Ann Well i don't know what program you were trying to use originally - but here is the URL for the one I was on about: http://www.censusdecoder(.)com Graham

Hi again Graham I have downloaded 1901DECODER but when I go on to person search on 1901 census, I do what you said,search for surname,then click on process search,then search results but the group button isn't highlighted. So then it goes on to the how to pay page!!! I know i am really thick but is the idea of this decode to avoid paying? HELP and thanks for your patience,what am I doing wrong? Ann, Darlington

With the 1901 decoder you have to click on "SHOW RESULTS" before "GROUP RESULTS" becomes visible. You effectively toggle between a displaay of the browser which is connected to the 1901 WWW site and a spreadsheet displaying the results. I first set to display 30 results. Then go through a series of searches, clicking "PROCESS RESULTS" each time - can easily clock up hundreds of possible matches. Then switch to SHOW RESULTS and save results. If you don't save before exiting then you lose everything when you exit. You then search away through these results by sorting into households etc. Also you can combine with previous results either in a spreadsheet or if you export to GEDCOM in a family tree program. I sometimes put things like that in a dummy file in my family tree program (LEGACY). LEGACY lets you open two files so you can examine alongside your main tree and copy across any results that interest you. MB

Graham, could you give me the web site address for the "The Mormon Church" for free census list. Thanx Eileen

he 1881 census for the LDS is here: http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=census/search_census.asp Sorry it shows on 2 lines but that's the fault of the message board - suggest you copy the above and paste it into your browser address bar. When you use the LDS census (make sure you select 1881 Census) wait for each section to load after you select the various items as further refinement of the search is possible. Graham