Money- Saving Tips
Chris Paton shares his top tips to help you save money as you search
Chris Paton reveals how you can research your family history on a budget, and picks the best free resources
While researching your family history can be fun, it can also be an expensive business at times. It’s a massive benefit to remote researchers that so many resources have now been digitised and made available online, but some of the records are only available on subscription websites. In addition, travel can be prohibitively expensive if you need to visit far-flung archives and repositories, and there’s always the risk that they don’t even hold the correct document to break down your brick wall.
However, with a little care and planning, and a heads-up on alternative resources, you don’t have to break the bank…
Trial Periods And Free Access
The largest subscription websites for genealogical records, Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk) and Findmypast ( findmypast.co.uk), allow you to sign up for a free account to access some basic background resources. This includes the ability to build family trees, so you may not need to buy dedicated family tree software.
Ancestry and Findmypast also allow you to sign up for a free introductory two-week trial period, using a credit or debit card, after which they will ‘auto-renew’ and deduct a payment for a full subscription. However, at present, if you immediately cancel the subscription after signing up, you will still retain access to the free trial, but no payment will then be deducted at the end.
At certain times of the year both Ancestry and Findmypast also offer free access to certain collections for a few days – for example, they often permit access to military collections during the Remembrance Week celebrations in November. You just need to be registered with a basic free account to gain access.
Community Access
Many genealogy vendors offer customised ‘community editions’ of their platforms to libraries, schools, companies and family history societies, which can be another way to gain free access, if you are a qualifying member. The library editions offer tailored versions of the platforms, but with some restrictions. For example, the Community Edition of Findmypast omits some datasets on its site, such as the collection of historical newspaper articles also on the British Newspaper Archive ( britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk), which is separately available through its own Community Edition. And Ancestry Library Edition offers a curated list of
British, Irish, American and Canadian collections.
Check if your local library offers access, or if a student, your academic institution.
Free Datasets
Although Ancestry and Findmypast are subscription sites, some of their indexed datasets are permanently free, requiring only a basic free account to gain access.
Findmypast has a dedicated page showing its free collections at findmypast.co.uk/free-ancestryrecords, with offerings that include the 1881 census for England, Scotland and Wales and the Devon Wills Index 1163–1999, as well as the collection British Army, De Ruvigny’s Roll Of Honour 1914–1918.
Examples on Ancestry include its collection of indexes to Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1655–1915, the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR), and many projects that have been indexed through its World Archives Project volunteerbased transcription project, such as West Yorkshire, England, Alehouse Licences, 1771–1962.
Free Newspapers
As well as the British Newspaper Archive’s Community Edition, your library may also subscribe to other licensed digital collections. In addition, there are various free-to-access newspaper websites
available, including the Welsh Newspaper Archive at newspapers. library.wales, Google Newspapers at news.google.com/newspapers,
which carries the Glasgow Herald from 1806 to 1990, and the London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes at thegazette. co.uk. And don’t forget to look for local holdings, with many other collections available on a much smaller basis in England – for example, it is possible to freely view the Teesdale Mercury
newspaper from 1855 to 2005 at teesdalemercuryarchive.org.uk.
Also, you can access the articles on the British Newspaper Archive for free if you subscribe and pay for a ‘Pro’ account to Findmypast – you don’t need to subscribe to both websites. However, the search facility on the British Newspaper Archive platform is superior, so carry out basic searches on that site, then use the dates of the search results to look up the articles on Findmypast.
Free Archive Collections
The National Archives at Kew ( nationalarchives.gov.uk) has entered into many partnerships with key online vendors such as Ancestry, Findmypast and The Genealogist ( thegenealogist. co.uk) to digitise vast swathes of its holdings, but it also offers some online records itself for a fee.
However, hidden away in its Digital Microfilms site at nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-withyour-research/research-guides/ free-online-records-digital-microfilm are many records that are completely free to access. Among the holdings available are various Royal Navy muster rolls, convict transportation registers, the Home Office: Ecclesiastical Census Returns (a religious census of England and Wales conducted in 1851), printed annual Army Lists, and recommendations for honours and awards 1935–1990. Documents can be downloaded as large PDF files, but are not searchable by keyword.
The National Records of Scotland also hosts some records free of charge on its site ScotlandsPlaces ( scotlandsplaces.gov.uk), including an extensive provision of tax records from the late 18th century. The National Archives of Ireland has various free collections at genealogy. nationalarchives.ie, including censuses, wills and tithe records, while the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has additional resources at nidirect.gov.uk/proni, including the searchable Ulster Covenant from 1912, valuation revision books, and a number of trade directories published during the 19th century.
‘Many records are free to access on The National Archives’ website’
FREE LICENSED RESOURCES
As well as offering library editions of popular subscription websites such as Ancestry and Findmypast, many libraries also offer access to various licensed digital holdings, which ticket-holders can use free of charge both in person at the library and from home.
For example, I live in Irvine in North Ayrshire. Having registered as a user of the National Library of Scotland ( nls.uk), I can gain free access to many handy collections including the British Library’s collection of 19thcentury newspapers; the vast digital academic library JSTOR; the digital archive of The Times 1785–2010; the digital archive of the Scotsman 1817–1950; the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Who’s Who and Who Was Who; and the UK Parliamentary Papers. Check your local library or county library to see what it offers, but note that you must live within the relevant catchment area to sign up.
EARN REWARDS
TheGenealogist offers a moneysaving incentive to volunteers through its UK Indexer project at ukindexer.co.uk. By indexing sources such as headstone inscriptions and census records, or by photographing headstones, you can earn credits for use on TheGenealogist or its sister site S&N Genealogy Supplies at genealogysupplies.com. A YouTube tutorial explaining the project can be watched at bit.ly/gene-rewards.
USE ALTERNATIVE SOURCE
Ordering civil registration certificates can be expensive, but there are many ways to obtain details of births, marriages and deaths – some of which provide more information for less money.
For example, online churchbased marriage registers post1837 may carry exactly the same information as the equivalent civil record for the event, while some records may even include additional details. Newspaper obituaries can go into great detail about the deceased’s life, including their last hours and minutes, while burial records can be equally helpful. Also, post-1869 burial records from Belfast City Council, available at belfastcity.gov.uk/community/ burialrecords/burialrecords.aspx, include all of the information in a civil death record, plus details of the time of burial and ownership of the lair – yet cost just £1.50, as opposed to historic death certificates at £2.50 on https:// geni.nidirect.gov.uk.
VISIT ARCHIVES
Many records are not online, and can only be viewed in an archive or other repository. Visiting an archive can be productive, but in any one visit, you will only have a certain amount of time available to carry out research. Time is money, so the better prepared you are in advance, the more you will achieve on the day.
Prior to a visit, make sure you have used the archive’s catalogue to identify records of interest, and that they will be available. If there is no catalogue online,
you should email or call the archive in advance to discuss your requirements. You may have to order materials in from an off-site storage facility, or the collections you’re interested in may be away being conserved, so a spontaneous visit could turn out to be a total waste of time and money.
FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETIES
Family history societies can help researchers to save on costs in many ways, most noticeably by allowing members with mutual interests to contact each other and collaborate on shared projects. Many societies’ websites have private members’ areas with unique offerings of records, as well as discussion forums to facilitate cooperation, while some societies also have their own dedicated research centres. These provide access to resources of local interest, as well as library editions of popular websites such as Ancestry and Findmypast.
Societies such as the Guild of One Name Studies ( one-name. org) also require their members to assist with enquiries into their specialist surname projects. If you have a family member with an unusual surname, they might be part of such a study.
Details of relevant societies across the UK can be found at familyhistoryfederation.com (for England and Wales), safhs.org.uk (for Scotland) and nifhs.org (for Northern Ireland).
SHARE COSTS
Another way to save money is to partner with a research buddy, and split the costs. You may, for example, wish to share a subscription to an online records platform (but check its terms and conditions first!), or you may make alternate visits to archives and other repositories. It can be especially useful to partner with someone who lives in another part of the country or overseas, if you have an interest in their particular location, and they in yours.
FREE UK GENEALOGY
The FreeUKGenealogy project ( freeuk genealogy.org.uk)
operates three websites offering volunteer-based transcriptions of popular genealogical records. FreeBMD ( freebmd.org.uk)
is the free-to-access platform for English and Welsh birth, marriage and death indexes, with some 274 million record entries from 1837 to 1992, while FreeREG ( freereg.org.uk)
offers transcriptions of parish records from England, Wales and Scotland, and at the time of writing has some 46 million record entries, including records from many nonconformist churches and dissenting faiths. Finally the FreeCEN project ( freecen.org.uk) also offers census transcriptions from 1841 to 1891 for the whole of Britain, although the Scottish coverage favours the earlier years, while the coverage of England and Wales favours the later years.
FREE GENEALOGY COURSES
If you do not understand the records you are using, you risk spending money on resources you don’t need. For example, a letter of administration purchased on probatesearch.service.gov.uk will have limited genealogical value compared with the details of a will. One way to help you save
money in the long term is to get some training in family history. This will help you avoid needless mistakes and the purchase of unnecessary records.
There are many online tutorials on genealogical websites, but you might also wish to follow a free course. For example, the University of Strathclyde runs the eight-week course Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree ( www.strath.ac.uk/studywithus/centre forlifelonglearning/genealogy).
FamilySearch also offers a substantial number of free courses and video tutorials through its Help Center at bit.ly/fs-lessons.
Digital Libraries
Many online libraries contain free-to-access digitised books with useful information for family historians, such as directories and parish histories. These include Google Books ( books.google.co. uk), Scribd ( scribd.com), Project Gutenberg ( www.gutenberg.org) and HathiTrust ( hathitrust.org).
In particular, the Internet
Archive has teamed up with many repositories to digitise useful content, including the Wellcome Library at archive.org/details/ wellcomelibrary and the National Library of Scotland at archive.org/ details/nationallibraryofscotland. Its free collections include military records for the whole of the UK.
Online Parish Clerks
‘Training will help you avoid mistakes and purchasing unnecessary records’
Online Parish Clerk (OPC) projects, which rely on volunteers, are available for many English parishes and counties, and aim to freely provide indexed and transcribed copies of records. The UKBMD website provides a handy list of current projects at ukbmd.org.uk/online_parish_clerk.
Newsletters And Promotions
Finally, companies and societies often offer promotions and free access to resources, as well as opportunities at shows for free consultations and assistance. Sign up to their e-mail newsletters for news of their latest offerings.