Tracing ancestors

[Booldawg]

I've been using GenesReunited to build up my family tree. Looking online there were various census' taken in 1901 and 1911 that have info. that I'd like to see.

How come you have to pay to view records from privately owned sites who host these census'? Surely info like this are public records and should be free to all?

[Booldawg]

Thanks for the comprehensive answer Zac. Guess nothing comes free.

[Mumof2]

My local library have Ancestry.com to use for free so you could check with your nearest library if they do that as well.

If all fails you could pay to use an online site as it's well worth a years subscription @ �80

[burston]

Your local library have access to Ancestry.com for free and you can look at all census from 1851 to 1901. The only other free one online is the 1881 which is on family.org

I didnt know the 1911 census had been issued yet.

[Rollo]

The 1911 census records are here:

http://www.1911census.co.uk/

But it is not complete yet.

[craft1948]

Like mumof2 I subscribe to ancestry.com and also thegenealogist as I spend a lot of time doing my tree. However, if you just want a couple of searches if you put a question in the Community section of genes reunited I'm sure someone would help you out for free.

[dot.hawkes]

the 1911 is pay per view, you can find your correct ancestor quite efficiently if you have plenty of advance info on them and their likely family in 1911, then just pay to see the original copy and download it. Alot of people have been wasting money through being ill prepared and failing to grasp how common some names are.

[cc1]

There's a site run by the Mormon Church in Utah which has an enormous amount of free data, going back to 14th Century in some parts. www.Familysearch.org is the site, though it is not complete, it has free acess to the whole of the 1881 Census, a wide selection of Parish records and world wide records if your family is sprea out.

You can also get 14 days free on Ancestry.co.uk and, ith a selection of email addresses, this can be extended!

[dot.hawkes]

familysearch.org contains the IGI, International Genealogical Index, this index has been compiled by the LDS Church to enable Church members to identify their ancestors and then postumously baptise them into the Church congregation. To do this the Church bought the filmed Parish Registers om Baptism and Marriages from the Churches all over the world. They then made their own transcription from the mictofilmed registers and created an alphabetical index by Country, County, Surname and then Christian name and then chrinologically by the christian name under eas=ch surname. The online version =gives you that record one christian name within a surname at a time and in order of county and within county chronologically.
As baptism records were only begun in 1538, as long as the Parish Church was around then, and as long as the original regsiter survived, and as long as the Bishop of the Diocese gave permission for the Mormons to have the register filmed, you should find the baptisms and marriages on the IGI,. from 1598, the registers were copied every quarter at the Bishop's Visitation to the parish and these Bishops Transcripts, being a hand copied copy of the original, were deposited with the Chruch Archive, which is usually the County record Office in England and Wales.

This means that on the IGI you are perthaps reading a printed transcript, of a name read on a roll of film, looked at on a reader, by someone who is unfamiliar with English surnames, who inputs the name into another computer. bearing in mind that the person who hand copied the names from the original register from 1598 onwards may well have been more familiar with the local names, this is the record to trust more than one transcribed in more recent times. BTs can be searched on film at your relevent CRO.

[dot.hawkes]

There are burials on the IGI but these will have been added by church members and the members can be identified by a reference number in the right of the originalk index.
In your local Mormon Family History Centre, you can order the original copies of the filmed registers of marriages and christenings, very useful if it is for a parish further away and aslo useful ater the Civil registratioin systen came in in July 1837, as you get to look at the church regsiter which is like the civil register.