Genealogy Chat

There are several offers on websites to search Census Records for free. However when you try to do this there is always a credit charge to pay.

Does anyone know of any site where you can search "for free" as in the BMD site?

Also is there any way you can search Scottish Census records with Genes Reunited credits?

Many Thanks in anticipation of any answers.

None of my scottish relatives come up on the search facility on this site other than in trees so I believe the credits bought from GR do not cover the scottish census.

Credits bought from GR are a waste of money.

Maureen

You would be wise to take out an ancestry sub and get all the census records 24/7 for just over a quid a week.

Or try The Genealogist site. Again you have to subscribe but at least you can view images etc and print off without any probs. Price is very similar to Ancestry.
Wish I'd not bothered with Ancestry now.
Di

It won't give you the full information but if you do a search for 1901 census decoder you can find a useful little program which will let you extract some details.

Sue

Thanks for your time to all above replies.

My first reaction was - that I would not renew my Genes Reunited Subscription when it comes up next month. However - there IS all the contact with other family trees - I dont know whether Ancestry Uk offers this. I was rather put off from them when I found out they were an American site and ,when I phoned to enquire, I could hardly understand the American lady who seemed to want my credit card details more than anything else!

Has anyone accepted these Ancestry UK free trials and found it better than Genes Reunited?

I

"You can do a Free Name Search on the 1901 census, in the PRO website - 1901 Census / National Archives, which you can google for."

But has anyone tried this site recently, its not operating. I have tried it several times to no avail!

You can search 1841/51/61/71/81/91 census for free at

http://freecen.rootsweb.com/cgi/search.pl

But they are not all complete so it's a case of pot luck

good luck

Roy

I agree entirely with Clare. You can not compare sites on a like for like basis.

Ancestry's main attraction is the access to the 1841-1901 Census Records, for this alone it is worth the subscription. You also have access to the BMD records, and other records which may of may not cover the areas you are interested in.

Free BMD is, however far better that Ancestry for the periods that transcriptions have been completed.

GR provide alternative access to, in particular, the 1901 Census. The GR Index, which is the original Government sponsored one, is actually much better and far more complete that the Ancestry one for this census, so don't dismiss it out of hand.

As far as I know, whilst Ancestry allows you to publish your tree, in conjunction with a number of what appear to be "associate" sites, such as Rootsweb, One World Tree, etc, but unless I'm mistaken is does not have the facility to search and match against other trees, which is where GR comes out on top every time.

I have tried the Genealogist, but it didn't compare to Ancestry, so I haven't bothered recently.. Has it improved this past year and what else does it offer that Ancestry doesn't?

In my post I said I preferred the Genealogist. It doesn't have USA info and the site is easy to navigate. You get what you see and aren't bombarded with links like Ancestry. Alright it doesn't have all the 1901 census as yet but at least I can view and print off what ever I want and it's quicker than Ancestry. The subscription cost was something like £60 for the year in March. I may be wrong but with all the probs I'm having with Ancestry at the mo I certainly won't renew next year.
Di

Faith,

If you use Ancestry.co.uk the USA connections are largely invisible.

I rarely have problems with viewing images, in fact I look almost daily, so am unsure what difficulties you are referring to.

I have found the Ancestry.co.uk family records site very good indeed.
I use it when I need to but only buy a voucher to cover for a fortnight when I need it, the only thing with the site is that the fortnight only covers you for a short time so if you haven't much time to view relatives, it does make it very difficult to find a lot of information in a short time, that's the only drawback.
Angela

Peter,
Where do I begin. lol
I get error messages when I really want to view an image. I find the whole site very slow and no it's not my computer as I have checked the downoad speed.
The print outs are awful even with the enhanced image viewer installed.
When you click UK records only, you get prompted to look at USA records.
I must have emailed Ancestry 8 times since I subscribed last month.
I'm not usually this frustrated but it's beginning to try my patience. I'll get off my soapbox now!
Di

You do seem to be having it bad.

Many of us use Ancestry every day, and apart from the odd blip now and again never have any major problems, so I don't know what is best to suggest.

A few images will not display, because they have been indexed incorrectly and the image can not be found. However these are few and far between. If you are getting error messages regularly this points to a different problem, possible with your browser settings.

Trying to print out images directly is probably not a good idea, especially if there is a lot of black around them. A far better way is to download the file images - set up some folders to store them in - then if you do want to print, use a photo program to load the image and crop the borders off.

As far as searching is concerned, if you go to Ancestry.co.uk, you can either use the main search box, for which there is a tick-box to include / exclude US datasets in your search, or better still, if you only want Censuses, select the UK census search page.

http://ancestry.co.uk/search/rectype/census/uk/default.aspx

Or, if you want to look at BMD's use the options on the BMD search page.

http://ancestry.co.uk/search/rectype/vital/freebmd/bmd.aspx

Peter
Thank you.
I changed my browser settings as advised by Ancestry when I initially started getting problems so don't know whether it could be this still.
Thanks also for the advice re searching. Hopefully I will get better at this!!
Di

THANK YOU FOR HINTS
JUST TAKING A NOTE OF IT
AVRIL

Sorry Christine - I gave the wrong site - the one I cannot get is:
www.census. pro.gov.uk
I appear to have started a popular and very useful discussion so thanks again to all.
Lizian

GR does not have ANY info.....it is a site set up for people interested in genealogy to help each other..............and to get help.

The only free census is 1881.............

The only free bmd's that I know of are freebmd and ukbmd.

For anything else, you have to expect to pay your way..............

Reg

One of you mentioned Scottish census records.
They are all now available on Ancestry - but only the index, not the image.
For the image (except 1881) you need to use Scotlandspeople. I use Ancestry as a rule but download the images for some as there can be errors in the transcriptions.
GR credits do NOT work for Scottish records.