Online databases e.g WVR, Findmypast and Ancestry

Bonzo · Post by **Bonzo** » 08 Feb 2012 19:34

I have been using my free trial of World Vital records and it started out well finding a lot of information. As has been said before their website is not great and I only had about 3 weeks use before I could not view any census details. That along with a list of other problems including the fact that support are not answering my emails has made my mind up not to subscribe.

I have not tried findmypast.co.uk or Ancestry.co.uk yet and they both have trials and I would be interested in any thoughts on either before I try them out; or any other recomendations.

I like the look of findmypast as I have put in some names I have quite a few details of already and they have come up with some missing information. More information than Ancestry did.

95% of my interest is England along with about 5% Scotland and I am only just starting to look seriously after aborted attempts in the past.

Anthony

ID:5893

Rusty · Post by **Rusty** » 08 Feb 2012 19:41

I think that we all have our favourites, personally I much prefer FMP to Ancestry. I don't know much about FMP's free trial but Ancestry ask for your card details up front and if you forget to cancel your proposed sub. you are locked in for a year.

Margaret

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 08 Feb 2012 19:46

I tend to 'flip flop' between Ancestry and FMP. So 6 months of one then 3 or 6 months of the other.

When I need Ancestry I use the Tesco Voucher option to buy a copy of Family Tree Maker, install it, activate 6 months of ancestry and uninstall FTM (in fact I use Sandboxie so I can cleanly uninstall it as it's a very messy install), around £20 of vouchers is a good deal for 6 months ancestry).

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 08 Feb 2012 19:48

Rusty, what I do is use one of the reminder services like http://www.memotome.com to send me an email a day before the end of the trial.

gerrynuk · Post by **gerrynuk** » 08 Feb 2012 20:25

Bonzo said:
I have not tried findmypast.co.uk or Ancestry.co.uk yet and they both have trials and I would be interested in any thoughts on either before I try them out; or any other recomendations.

I like the look of findmypast as I have put in some names I have quite a few details of already and they have come up with some missing information. More information than Ancestry did.

95% of my interest is England along with about 5% Scotland and I am only just starting to look seriously after aborted attempts in the past.

Anthony

I use both FMP and Ancestry and they both have their good and bad points. I find the Ancestry search engine is much better if you are not sure about the details - spelling of names/dates/locations etc and Ancestry Census images are often much clearer then FMP, which tend to be rather faint. Also Ancestry is adding new collections all the time. You can also get access, with a full sub, to world-wide data which is incredibly useful for ancestors that emigrated.

On the other hand FMP has some interesting collections as well as all the UK Censuses (except that you cannot see the images for Scotland - same as Ancestry.) and is also adding new collections on a regular basis. FMP transcripts tend to be better than Ancestry but not always, although they are generally more responsive to corrections. FMP's search engine can be a pain when looking up marriages (as it is only possible to specify one spouse) or baptisms (where the parents can't be specified).

I suggest you look at the list of their collections to see which one is going to suit your needs best.

RSellens · Post by **RSellens** » 08 Feb 2012 20:25

I personally prefer Ancestry, i have never had any trouble with them and have found a huge amount of records for my family.
I personally use FH as my master file, and just manually upload basics into Ancestrys tree. The 'matching' function is then quite good at finding additional records for you, so long as you use common sense about what records you accept from other trees

It's amazing how many trees are on the site which ignore obvious errors (i.e i had person trying to tell me my tree was wrong as he matched names, and had a US census showing the lady in question was in America not the UK, however he completly ignored the photo showing she was white when his US census clearly listed his one as black !!!)

Richard

Bonzo · Post by **Bonzo** » 08 Feb 2012 21:05

Thanks for the replys and useful information. I had considered joining one for 6 months or so and then the other for six months. For example Find my past had outgoing passenger lists but Ancestry had incoming lists.

With world vital records I had quite a bit of information before I started and after 2 weeks I was hitting a brick wall as I needed the 1851 census. So a change of website should be good as there is access to different databases.
Access to the Scotish records is required to go back on one branch of the family.

It is a good tip about the Tesco vouchers Jane although we do most of our shopping at Morrisons and the few Tesco vouchers we get are usualy spent on a member of the household going away for a Spa day [rolleyes]

I think as Richard suggest I will check the databases out first and make a decission from there.

The main reason for my previous abortive attempts was I took information from trees on the web and I found some people had the same person as the wife and daughter as well as other glaring errors. Even now I have a couple of different spouses to another tree I know of; but it is nice to have the records to see where I got the information from rather than relying on somebody elses deductions.

Anyway this is all quite adictive and interesting.

Anthony

Post by **tatewise** » 08 Feb 2012 22:52

I prefer to use FindMyPast that have greatly improved their index search for BMD records recently.

Your local public library may have a subscription to AncestryUK that allows members free access from the library PC.

Also do not forget http://www.freebmd.org.uk and http://www.freecen.org.uk and http://www.freereg.org.uk.

johnmorrisoniom · Post by **johnmorrisoniom** » 09 Feb 2012 14:01

I use both ancestry and FMP, but tend to use FMP first and only use ancestry if I can't find someone on FMP. The similar names options on each will come up with completely different answers. As Mike says, the BMD records on FMP are now greatly improved. Looking for marriages, after you have searched on one partner, you can then refine the search by adding the other partner, narrowing the year range and also selecting counties.

Bonzo · Post by **Bonzo** » 09 Feb 2012 16:41

I had not found those sites tatewise and will have a look at them.

There was a Cambridge website I found useful for spouse maiden names: Camdex
I knew the husbands name from the census and the wifes first name; I then searched around the time they probably were married and could then locate the spouses surname.

findmypast was the site that looked the most useful to me on my quick check and it looks like its the way to go.

sdl180 · Post by **sdl180** » 10 Feb 2012 11:44

I prefer Ancestry and have the worldwide membership due to having many ancesters in Canada and elsewhere. I did use FMP as well, but didn't like the searching as much, and wasn't happy at having to buy tokens on top of my subscription when the 1911 census was released. I now use Ancestry all of the time, but if I want to use FMP there is token based usage available. I also use Scotlands People for Scottish BMD and Census images, which is also token based.

Steve

johnmorrisoniom · Post by **johnmorrisoniom** » 10 Feb 2012 11:47

The full FMP subscription covers all census records, and has done so for over 2 years. In fact there is very little not covered by the full subscription

sdl180 · Post by **sdl180** » 10 Feb 2012 16:18

Hi John,

I appreciate that FMP now covers all censuses, but when the 1911 census was released it was only available at http://www.1911census.co.uk for which you had to purchase tokens from FMP. I didn't see much point in paying FMP for both subscription and tokens, so I didn't renew my subscription to it. When comparing the two, Ancestry had more records that I found useful (particularly for Canada), and I preferred the interface. I do still look at FMP, but I haven't found anything recently that tempts me to renew. Maybe one day.

Regards

Steve

AnneEast · Post by **AnneEast** » 12 Feb 2012 22:54

I've used Ancestry for several years. Their parish record images (London, Liverpool, West Yorkshire) are excellent. As research manager for a One Name Society those images alone have 'saved' us £1,000s in marriage certificates!!

I've only just started using FMP. Like others I find the searching good and like the way you can quickly move from one census to another searching for the same person. However if they are 'hiding' I can find them more easily with Ancestry, which has a more flexible search.

Anne

Johnyeates · Post by **Johnyeates** » 16 Feb 2012 16:55

I get really annoyed with Ancestry, I enter a location for the search and Ancestry insists on clouding the issue with other location including the USA when I had searched on UK Locations.
I stopped using Ancestry 18 months ago and use FindMyPast. Also I find FMP Census transcripts include everyone and their occupations (usually). I save both the Transcript and Original document.
If I need ancestry for some reason then I go to the nearby library (used it once in the past year)

ireneblackburn · Post by **ireneblackburn** » 16 Feb 2012 19:48

I like Ancestry as I find it more flexible. I use the Yorkshire and London PRs a lot, and I have been filling quite a few people on the Electoral Rolls.

I find that if you tick UK records only, that is what you get.

ireneblackburn · Post by **ireneblackburn** » 16 Feb 2012 19:49

sorry, that should say finding not filling.

jmurphy · Post by **jmurphy** » 01 Mar 2012 18:23

For those of you using Ancestry, if you haven't already, do take a look at Steve Morse's One-Step Web Pages at http://stevemorse.org/

His search forms make searching Ancestry much easier.

I have used WVR, Ancestry, and the 1911 Census site. I had a sub at WVR but dropped it; I had a World sub at Ancestry for a while, but have fallen back to US-only for a while. I've done PPV at the 1911 Census site. Since WVR's census records came from FindMyPast, I had already gotten most of the records I needed. One day if FMP adds more records for Devon, I'd be happy to give it another try.

Yes, it's great to have a good search engine rather than a bad one, and other tools, but in the end it comes down to the records offered. If the site doesn't cover the area or time period you need, are you going to find anything?

In the case of my searches for Canada, I signed up for Ancestry's World sub, only to find that the records I was hoping for weren't kept during the period I wanted, so Ancestry couldn't have had anything for me to search in any case. So as far as I'm concerned, any answer to the 'which service is best' has to start with 'what records do they have and do you need access to those?', and the search tools and extras come second.

In any case I find it's useful to have second sources -- if you can have access to two services with two different indexes it is usually better than just one. In the US we can often get Heritage Quest at the library as a cross-check to Ancestry; in the UK it is helpful to have FreeCEN as well as Ancestry or FindMyPast.

Bonzo · Post by **Bonzo** » 01 Mar 2012 20:01

I still have WVR access at the moment and will carry on to find as much as I can until it runs out. Then as seems to be the general consensus go with the company that has the records I require for a while.
I can get used to search engine problems which may be a pain but not insubmountable. For instance with WVR you search all databases and get no census results; but if you search each census database individualy you get the results! It is more long winded but works.

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