Bit of advice about your own online successes

[dotty.]

I'm starting a workshop for Family History in a week or so at a local pensioners group #they have 900 members! Noone mentioned that when I agreed to do this btw! Anyway, the workshops will support them in using online resources for their family history research. Obviously they are very very budget minded and will not want to spend a small fortune. My plan is to show them that this isn't necessary, i do trees all the time with hardly ever any outlay beyond my ancestry subscription. I know many of you use the 1911 and FMP, but I don't use the genealogist or freeBMD, can someone give me an update on those sites and also any others thatI may not be familiat with please. I use familysearch,org alot of course, and the Lancashire parish regsiters online for example.

[Rose Maybud]

Shouldn't think all 900 will want to do their family history!

What sort of update were you after?

FREEBMD is coming more up to date all the time. Births are pretty well all there 1837 - 1938, some done up to 1951. Marriages up to about 1951. Deaths up to about 1950.
Can be slow at times. Variants searches even slower. Transcription accuracy good.

FMP has fully searchable BMD, the variants algorithm is good. Census searching - you get what you specify and not what 'might be useful' as on Ancestry. I have to concede that Ancestry has found people that FMP hasn't. For beginners, using Ancestry gets results a bit quicker if you don't know where to start because something is bound to pop up.

FMP has some Parish Register entries not on the IGI, seems to depend on whether that particular county's FHS has released their transcriptions.

Yahoo groups are free.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

[dotty.]

cheers for that Rose, I hope 900 don't ! I agree that ancestry is probably the one to stick with as it is by far the most comprehensive, the transcriptions leave alot to be deired though, but at least they amend the errors when there is a report sent in.

[jubieanna]

good luck with group dotty. I hope you won't be too busy to help us out when we need your expertise though x

[carolegif]

I run a U3A Group. We all contrbute towards Ancestry and FMP - works out about £15 per member.
There is Rootsweb and Rootschat, GENUKI which gives info by place, plus some local sites like the London Metropolital Archive and the Liverpool Roots site. Cyndi's List can get you to quite a few free sites although mainly in the Us but not all. Commonwealth War Graves is useful for pensioners and there are some free military sites.
It appears that if you are searching 'up North' there are more free sites, but parts of the South are expensivdr. OH's family come from Cambridgeshire and you have to pay £30+ for CD's of Parish Records because the Uni bought them all!