An assessment of FindMyPast

Question

For the past two months I've been using FamilySearch to flesh out my tree, then manually trasferring the records to Wikitree. It has worked fine up to a point, but on most lines progress had slowed to a crawl.

I decided to try out the 14 day free offer at FindMyPast since they profess to be the best at UK records. And the verdict is:

Great site! I'm fairly unimpressed with their presentation, and have yet to detect the presence of anyone else's tree merging with my GEDCOM upload, but the hinting system is brilliant. In every line - except those known to be major brick walls due to lack of facts - I have managed to extend by at least two generations with almost no effort.

When I check FamilySearch again, the records are often there but very hard to find. So the big plus with FindMyPast is that their hinting system works extremely well, without overwhelming the user with inapplicable records.

I give them a solid recommendation if you need to research UK records, particularly those from the 1700's and earlier where it starts to get harder. They also have adequate coverage of Australian records, although I beat those to death by searching BDM records weeks ago.

I won't be subscribing with them immediately, but when the LivingDNA test results arrive in a couple of months it would be a good time to upload my results to them and search for matches. Meanwhile I'm online every waking moment, expanding my Wikitree family with the data provided.

Comments

I agree wholeheartedly. I often transcribe images from FmP and enter details to my profiles and then list both this and the (often unsatisfactory) familysearch results as sources to satisfy Wikitree's desire for free sources.

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What you say is absolutely true.

The 1939 Register is there - it's the closest thing to a 1941 census which wasn't taken because of WWII. Possibly living people are redacted but each entry has the date of birth which is a great help.

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Curious if anyone has used it for Scottish ancestry, and if so how useful is it?

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Probably not very, as Scotland's People used to be run by the same firm as a sister site.

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If I accidentally happen upon something Scottish I'll review it but generally I head straight for Scotland's People followed by FamilySearch.

Answer 1

Naturally love the newspapers searches where I found many Irish and English obituaries.

Also found lots of Philadelphia Catholic baptismal records. This is where I would subscribe again to fill in some more research next summer.

Answer 2

Rob if you plan on subscribing to Find My Past then subscribe to the Lost Cousins  newsletter he often has offers. With Easter and St George's Day  coming up this month there could be some.

Comments

I'm a fan of Lost Cousins myself, and a member of it.

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Nice tip, thanks.

Answer 3

I find Find My Past invaluable for research in Lichfield Diocese (Staffordshire and Derbyshire, plus parts of Warwickshire and Shropshire): images of wills, marriage licences, and Staffordshire parish registers. But coverage of other parts of England for pre-1837 records is not so good. So check that they actually have the records you're interested in before subscribing.

Comments

A large number of mine have been in Cornwall and they're brilliant for that area. Also, FS don't have much 1841 census data whereas FMP has it all.

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I love their coverage of Devon (most of my ancestors come from there).  They have images of parish registers, and you can view the spidery (or very beautiful) brown handwriting.

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Think the value depends so much upon the area you are interested in. I am lucky enough to have institutional access to FMP  and I subscribe to Ancestry but I only use FMP occassionally as most of the records I use are on Ancestry. As I use it less  I'm not so familiar with the search engine.

(though the other day I used the two in conjunction for one mans life  a will , parish records,  quarter sessions records , overseers of poor records, prison records and census  all on ancestry but FMP had petitions for his pardon without which the details of his crime were unclear)

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Leicestershire is very good on Findmypast also.

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Agree, Devon records much better than Ancestry

Answer 4

I find it a useful adjunct for research on my early English lines. They have indexed a lot of parish registers that familysearch.org and ancestry.com have not indexed yet.

Answer 5

I found FindMyPast to be quite strong on UK records. The only negative for me is the difficulty of citing their records - nothing like the dead-easy copy/paste from FamilySearch.

Comments

Here's one I just finished: James Brown

I just went into the Record Transcription page, copied everything down to the source into the clipboard and dumped it into the page. Simples.

NB: The example here is the marriage record.

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I have to admit I cheat a bit. I search with Familysearch for the transcribed source, then look at the source image on Findmypast, then post the citation for familysearch and add the text "affiliate image link:" or "associated image:" after the citation with the Findmypast Url after it.

Otherwise I look at the transcription on Findmypast and copy/paste any reference numbers and the name of the repository after the words "Findmypast, citing", followed by the Url.

Answer 6

I completely agree with your assessment of FindMyPast! Joining that website a few years ago helped me to put a crack in a long time brick wall. There is still more work to do as it is a tough one but the break will come through FindMyPast. Totally worth the membership!!

Answer 7

Good post. Thanks!