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Beginners => Family History Beginners Board => Topic started by: mac77782 on Saturday 27 January 24 07:46 GMT (UK)
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Hi new member here!! Rant alert!! I'm half Scottish Half French and started my family tree in September last year. I have 2-300 great grandparents on my tree in France in stark comparison to my dozen on the Scottish Side. What an absolute joke. In France, you can literally, on websites such as Filae and Geneanet - read through the parish records page by page. All the records are online. I pay I think £40 for Filae and searching in France is like night and day from Scotland. What a rip off. Not only do you have to pay Ancestry for next to no information, to put the icing on the cake you then .. cause you'll probably find damn all on Ancestry.. have to pay more money to Scotlands People to view one page of a parish book. What an embarrassment. Does anyone think,, as clearly I'm not going to get as far with Scotland as France, am I better off actually going to Edinburgh? Can you actually physically look through the books there? I hope that one day someone will index these records online, not for a company such as Scotlands People to get hold of and fleece the general population to get a glimpse at a page, but so they are online on the likes of My Heritage and Ancestry such as they are in Europe. Talk about daylight robbery and the absolute height of ineptitude. Ok rant over now ;D ;D ;D
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Why would you think records should be free? If they are indexed, then it has taken many hours for people, usually vounteers, to do it. Genealogy is an expensive hobby
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Welcome to rootschat
I hope that one day someone will index these records online, not for a company such as Scotlands People to get hold of and fleece the general population to get a glimpse at a page,
https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/
Not a company but the Scottish government :)
Sorry, Genealogy is a hobby so why should tax payers fund availability of records for us.
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If you go back far enough you'll find lots on line for free (eg Church Records) in the UK. There are limitations with Filae and geneanet, although Filae certainly can help to narrow things down to the correct commune. I've had to spend a long time trawling through French Church records (and actes) that didn't show up in Filae and geneanet. You are spot on though, tracing your family records can be an expensive business. Thank goodness for the digital and pdf versions of bmd certificates which are so much cheaper.
Talking about bmd certificates - everytime I have to provide a certificate for the French bureaucrats it's another £11 or £12 as they insist it's dated within the last 3 months!
Good luck with your research and remember you may be able to access some of the Genealogy websites (Ancestry, Family Search etc) at your local library. I've yet to visit an LDS Family History Centre for access to archives.
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Hi new member here!! Rant alert!! I'm half Scottish Half French and started my family tree in September last year. I have 2-300 great grandparents on my tree in France in stark comparison to my dozen on the Scottish Side.
Not sure I understand?
I have 2 parents, 4 grandparents and 8 great-grandparents.
How did you manage 300?! :o
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Why would you think records should be free? If they are indexed, then it has taken many hours for people, usually vounteers, to do it. Genealogy is an expensive hobby
Not free, but it seems way more expensive here to have to pay for each document individually. I meant why are they not indexed properly thats really what I meant. Like what you're looking for isnt on Ancestry, which you're paying for, but it is on Scotlands People. But anyway I have my answer now spoke to Ancestry and the Scottish Government have the publishing rights apparently. I didnt mean free. I'm not a cheapskate, I'm paying £13 a month for ancestry, £40 I think for 3 months on Filae, £120 to My Heritage. I think having forked out this money I should be able to see these documents that was I getting at, clearly it's a government thing. Anyway.. I'm actually not doing too bad on the Scottish side since I posted my rant lol
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If you go back far enough you'll find lots on line for free (eg Church Records) in the UK. There are limitations with Filae and geneanet, although Filae certainly can help to narrow things down to the correct commune. I've had to spend a long time trawling through French Church records (and actes) that didn't show up in Filae and geneanet. You are spot on though, tracing your family records can be an expensive business. Thank goodness for the digital and pdf versions of bmd certificates which are so much cheaper.
Talking about bmd certificates - everytime I have to provide a certificate for the French bureaucrats it's another £11 or £12 as they insist it's dated within the last 3 months!
Good luck with your research and remember you may be able to access some of the Genealogy websites (Ancestry, Family Search etc) at your local library. I've yet to visit an LDS Family History Centre for access to archives.
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Haha poor you - ye .. andddd I have discovered you cant delete a post here ;D Getting a bit of heat here but I dont think I worded it very well. I'm actually not doing too badly now on the Scottish side ((I've discovered I descend from Leod, son of Olaf The Black cant tell you how cool I am finding this)), all I meant was the Scottish Government seem to be fleecing people for this info. It shouldn't be free but it should at least be available if you are paying the likes of Ancestry. For example, on Filae, you search for Joe Blogs from Paris. The parochial records are available on either the archives websites (free) or on Filae. Regardless of where you find the parochial record, you can then scroll through the book. You can't do that here - that's all I was saying.
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Moderator comment - topics merged
To the person that said.. why should ' tax payers ' (( really hate when people come out with that tripe )) money should be spent on publishing historical records. I would love to show you my 3 pages of A 3 paper stuck together with about 300 (( so far )) great grandparents in France. I havent even added the next few generations it is going to be enormous. In stark contrast to my dozen or so in the UK. I've never seen such a sh** show, poorly organised, more than likely under funded situation here. It is virtually impossible to do your ancestry here. Where as in France it would appear I'm almost going to be back to Adam and Eve. There is not one blank box in all of my great grandparents back to 1699. I know what they did, what there jobs were, where they lived. Each area in France has an archive website. You literally just go there, type in the year and you can look through the whole book, yep... for freee... online. Why in gods name can you not do this here. You search for info on Ancestry, which you're paying for, it's not there. You then have to go to Scotlands people, pay more money just in the hope that the first one you click on is the right one. My question remains the same, if I go to Edinburgh or somewhere to the archive offices are you actually able to look through the books there? So hard just doing it online I've almost given up on the UK.
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I'm confused?!
I only have 8 great-grandparents - the parents of my grandparents.
Have you tried using FreeBMD, FreeCen, FreeReg or FamilySearch?
BTW British Genealogy is a website that I used to be a member of. I stopped using it when it was taken over by Forces War Records.
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I could access any Archive in the UK, provided I took recent printed proof of who I was with my address on the same AND my Passport (or a photo Driving Licence for those who hold one).
If you come from France or elsewhere, you'll also need evidence of your temporary address of where you are staying, as well as your usual home address.
The British Library and others have suffered losses, items removed or cut out and managed to prosecute one offender, so you'll need to prove who you are.
Many of our ancestors names might be missing in C of E and records, due to being Nonconformist, Roman Catholic or refusing to register, until it became Law.
The only archive which were awkward with me in my 30 years and said I could not visit as they had no facilities for visitors and would not photograph a Register (even for payment) was a Roman Catholic Diocesan Archive in Yorkshire, who admitted to holding a late 18th Century Register (not online), that I wanted to see.
Subscription websites only have a fraction of the records that exist hidden away in Archives.
Ancestors names appear in many old Manorial records, Land Owner, Probate, Property and other records and are not always listed in the usual run of the mill type records, you find online.
Not everyone in England and Wales was C of E, or was baptised C of E!
When E & W Civil Registration started in 1837, some still didn't Register Births.
You had to Civil Register a Death from 1837, to get a Certificate of Burial, to pass to your Undertaker. I have an 1845 example of one of these.
Mark
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I'm confused?!
I only have 8 great-grandparents - the parents of my grandparents.
Have you tried using FreeBMD, FreeCen, FreeReg or FamilySearch?
BTW British Genealogy is a website that I used to be a member of. I stopped using it when it was taken over by Forces War Records.
Morning!!! So those 8 grandparents have 16 parents - those 16 have 32 and so on :) It doubles each time. Ye Family Search I have tried - just seems an immense task online compared to France. I'm hoping I can get somewhere at the Archives place :)
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I can access any Archive in the UK, provided I take recent printed proof of who I am with my address on the same AND my Passport (or a photo Driving Licence).
If you come from France or elsewhere, you'll also need evidence of your temporary address of where you are staying, as well as your usual address.
The British Library and others have suffered losses, items removed or cut out and managed to prosecute one offender, so you'll need to prove who you are.
Many of our ancestors names might be missing in C of E records, due to being Nonconformist, Roman Catholic or refusing to
The only archive which were awkward with me in my 30 years and said I could not visit as they had no facilities for visitors and would not photograph a Register (even for payment) was a Roman Catholic Diocesan Archive in Yorkshire, who admitted to holding a late 18th Century Register (not online), that I wanted to see.
Subscription websites only have a fraction of the records that exist hidden away in Archives.
Ancestors names appear in many old Manorial records, Land Owner, Probate, Property and other records and are not always listed in the usual run of the mill type records, you find online, not everyone in England and Wales was C of E, or was baptised C of E!
Mark
Aw thanks Mark. Ye I mean I'm not attacking people here - just the way we do Genealogy is crazy. I was born here so it's all good although I have both passports. So you just rock up then and you can look through the books? Dont get why on earth you cant do this online. It's crazy. If you're English I think you will also fair better as I think the clearances has had a lot to do with missing parish records. But even the ones that are available,, for example my friend from school her mums sent me this book which is basically a book detailing the parish records, how they were recorded, where, and what dates are available etc. But I'm yet to find out where they are I'm presuming it's Edinburgh. Just makes no sense to have one page at a time available. My god it would cost an absolute fortune just using Scotlands People. Aye.... we know how to rinse folk of cash in this country. Anything for a quick buck. 'Yes first minister perfect, lets charge £6 quid a doc' ;D ;D ;D. Even the certainty after finding one feels off. In France you know for sure it's them as the parish records are so detailed. Here you're like welllll.. it could be them not 100% sure but lets go with it lol. Even my friends recently given up who I was hoping would get into it and we could have a hobby together but she thinks the same as me - shes like its like my family dont exist at all ;D ;D
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It is an immense task to get your lineage if they didn't have a C of E Baptism, or the Register / Bishop's Transcript is missing, or did not Register an England & Wales Civil Birth (from 1837).
Look at my Avatar for my 19th Century family, my descendants had married descendants of my ancestors from both sides of no Baptism gap circa 1786.
I found four early 20th Century funeral reports in newspapers, with my distant family relatives (funeral attendees) listed and their relationships / Yorks villages and could prove what my Grandmother was suggesting 50 years ago, to me when I was a boy.
My Grandmother's mentioned a type of incest, albeit very distant!
Mark
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I can access any Archive in the UK, provided I take recent printed proof of who I am with my address on the same AND my Passport (or a photo Driving Licence).
If you come from France or elsewhere, you'll also need evidence of your temporary address of where you are staying, as well as your usual address.
The British Library and others have suffered losses, items removed or cut out and managed to prosecute one offender, so you'll need to prove who you are.
Many of our ancestors names might be missing in C of E records, due to being Nonconformist, Roman Catholic or refusing to
The only archive which were awkward with me in my 30 years and said I could not visit as they had no facilities for visitors and would not photograph a Register (even for payment) was a Roman Catholic Diocesan Archive in Yorkshire, who admitted to holding a late 18th Century Register (not online), that I wanted to see.
Subscription websites only have a fraction of the records that exist hidden away in Archives.
Ancestors names appear in many old Manorial records, Land Owner, Probate, Property and other records and are not always listed in the usual run of the mill type records, you find online, not everyone in England and Wales was C of E, or was baptised C of E!
Mark
Aw thanks Mark. Ye I mean I'm not attacking people here - just the way we do Genealogy is crazy. I was born here so it's all good although I have both passports. So you just rock up then and you can look through the books? Dont get why on earth you cant do this online. It's crazy. If you're English I think you will also fair better as I think the clearances has had a lot to do with missing parish records. But even the ones that are available,, for example my friend from school her mums sent me this book which is basically a book detailing the parish records, how they were recorded, where, and what dates are available etc. But I'm yet to find out where they are I'm presuming it's Edinburgh. Just makes no sense to have one page at a time available. My god it would cost an absolute fortune just using Scotlands People. Aye.... we know how to rinse folk of cash in this country. Anything for a quick buck. 'Yes first minister perfect, lets charge £6 quid a doc' ;D ;D ;D. Even the certainty after finding one feels off. In France you know for sure it's them as the parish records are so detailed. Here you're like welllll.. it could be them not 100% sure but lets go with it lol. Even my friends recently given up who I was hoping would get into it and we could have a hobby together but she thinks the same as me - shes like its like my family dont exist at all ;D ;D
Back again Mark.. just reading your message again. I will be pondering this at work you seem like you know what you're doing. So archives here then.. hm wellll my grand parents were from Harris and Lewis so they will def be Free Church of Scotland. I'm aware the records only go to I think late 1700s for both. Absolutely gutting. More than likely to do with the clearances. But there are oral accounts for the last 60 years that have been recorded which my cousin managed to get hold of so I have quite a lot. But of those available years it's like ridiculous trying to find anything online. I guess from your message I'm def going to get further at the archives place in the city.
Thanks Mark!
Chris
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Individual privacy springs to mind here. Maybe the French didn't mind every aspect of their lives being recorded and maybe the English did. I don't suppose either nation took that stance with a view to making it easy or difficult for generations to come to find them.
Where's the enjoyment in just sitting at a desk poring over online documents and finding your ancestry without much of s struggle.
Part of the thrill in England, for me at least and I am sure for many others, is finding that elusive record after years of searching and being able to add a further generation. Genealogy is not a hobby to be completed in 6 months.
Pheno
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It is an immense task to get your lineage if they didn't have a C of E Baptism, or the Register / Bishop's Transcript is missing, or did not Register an England & Wales Civil Birth (from 1837).
Look at my Avatar for my 19th Century family, my descendants had married descendants of my ancestors from both sides of no Baptism gap circa 1786.
I found four 20th Century funeral reports in newspapers, with my distant family relatives (funeral attendees) listed and their relationships and could prove what my Grandmother was suggesting 50 years ago, to me when I was a boy.
My Grandmother's mentioned a type of incest, albeit very distant!
Mark
Lol I cant open it but looks cool just getting ready for work here. That's funny. That's bound to happen though when you go back. I've met a guy in France we are cousins like 5 or 6 times from both sides - mental. Ye I just think they havent organised it well enough. For the amount of data there is Jesus I can touch type 60 wpm it cant be that hard to get it online. I think France uses a place in Morocco they transcribe it all and it's indexed online. If they're going to hold on to it for 100 years to then not be released accordingly makes no sense. Well I guess it is if you go to the archives place but it just makes the task a lot lot harder.
Chris
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To the person that said.. why should ' tax payers ' (( really hate when people come out with that tripe )) money should be spent on publishing historical records
I do not dispute that historical records should be published but you want them available online and free of charge
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Aw thanks Mark. Ye I mean I'm not attacking people here - just the way we do Genealogy is crazy. I was born here so it's all good although I have both passports. So you just rock up then and you can look through the books? Dont get why on earth you cant do this online. It's crazy. If you're English I think you will also fair better as I think the clearances has had a lot to do with missing parish records. But even the ones that are available,, for example my friend from school her mums sent me this book which is basically a book detailing the parish records, how they were recorded, where, and what dates are available etc. But I'm yet to find out where they are I'm presuming it's Edinburgh. Just makes no sense to have one page at a time available. My god it would cost an absolute fortune just using Scotlands People. Aye.... we know how to rinse folk of cash in this country. Anything for a quick buck. 'Yes first minister perfect, lets charge £6 quid a doc' ;D ;D ;D. Even the certainty after finding one feels off. In France you know for sure it's them as the parish records are so detailed. Here you're like welllll.. it could be them not 100% sure but lets go with it lol. Even my friends recently given up who I was hoping would get into it and we could have a hobby together but she thinks the same as me - shes like its like my family dont exist at all ;D ;D
No, you cannot just rock up, as you put it and ask to see records, many repositories require an advance appointment and a few require advanced permission on certain records.
When dealing with old records still held by UK Government Departments and Health etc., the enquirer will often need to prove they are related and the immediate next of kin mentioned in the record requested are deceased and often those in 2nd Marriages to them etc., are also deceased (using formal death records / Probate), and/or have a right to have a copy.
Even early C19 deposited surviving property records required tracing the current owner of the property (which stands there now), making a formal written approach and getting advance written permission from a Solicitor, for a researcher to go to their place of deposit.
There may also be Archive reproduction fees etc., plus your researcher's/own expenses, etc.
Mark
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Quote "it is virtually impossible to do your ancestry here". Many of us have managed to - just takes a lot of hard work.
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Quote "it is virtually impossible to do your ancestry here". Many of us have managed to - just takes a lot of hard work.
Perhaps nowadays people expect to find everything easily accessible. :-\
I am like many on here who have spent hours at local record offices, LDS family history centres and going to TNA (Kew) and offices in London to get BMD certificates, Wills etc. I am sure that many people new to family history would not bother if they had to trawl through census and parish registers to get the information that is now so readily available. However it was enjoyable and the sense of achievement when you found something was far greater than you can get now by just typing into a search engine.
I wish I had kept a record of how much I have spent on this hobby over the years ;D
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started my family tree in September last year.
I've discovered I descend from Leod, son of Olaf The Black cant tell you how cool I am finding this
That is pretty good going to get back to the 13th century in 5 months of research. Particularly as, apparently, almost nothing is known about Leod and he doesn't appear in any contemporary records
https://dbpedia.org/page/Leod
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not only do you have to pay Ancestry for next to no information, to put the icing on the cake you then .. cause you'll probably find damn all on Ancestry.
D..... right you won't find anything on Ancestry because (In spite of what they claim) they don't have the basic Scottish information but here's a bit of advice: you don't have to cough up to Ancestry. You can just ignore them altogether, and I strongly recommend that you do just that.
See https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=714261.0
Does anyone think, as clearly I'm not going to get as far with Scotland as France, am I better off actually going to Edinburgh? Can you actually physically look through the books there?
No, you no longer get to handle the books because the books were at risk of damage from too much handling, but in Edinburgh you can look through digital images of all the births, baptisms, banns, marriages and deaths held by Scotland's People for a modest daily fee.
I hope that one day someone will index these records online, not for a company such as Scotlands People to get hold of and fleece the general population to get a glimpse at a page, but so they are online on the likes of My Heritage and Ancestry such as they are in Europe. Talk about daylight robbery and the absolute height of ineptitude.
If you had bothered to take the trouble to find out, you would have discovered that someone HAS indexed the Scottish records online. You can view ALL the indexes online, free of charge, at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. You only need to pay if you want to view the original records online. Something you don't get at all at Ancestry and MyHeritage.
Scotland's People is not a 'company'. It's an arm of the Scottish government, and it is they who decide the charges. And the income is reinvested in digitising more and more original records. Why should I, as a Scottish taxpayer, expect the public purse to pay for my hobby, when they have other and more pressing matters to address like welfare and education?
And when it comes to fleecing customers, Ancestry and MyHeritage are leading trailblazers. These are private companies who would have you believe that they have everything, and at the same time are peddling arrant nonsense in the form of fantasy family trees going all the way back to the Dark Ages. I am certainly not about to waste my money to access all these loads of tripe and claptrap, or to pay my money over to boost the profits of a foreign company.
I can't really comment on the availablility of French records except to say that the ones I have been looking for for about 35 years have so far eluded me. And it's not a language thing because I happen to speak, read and write French fluently, so I wouldn't have any problems finding the stuff if it were as readily available as you claim it is.
Next time you plan to explode as a newbie with a rant into an established community of mostly helpful people, I strongly recommend that you make sure you know what you are talking about before you let fly.
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not only do you have to pay Ancestry for next to no information, to put the icing on the cake you then .. cause you'll probably find damn all on Ancestry.
D..... right you won't find anything on Ancestry because (In spite of what they claim) they don't have the basic Scottish information but here's a bit of advice: you don't have to cough up to Ancestry. You can just ignore them altogether, and I strongly recommend that you do just that.
See https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=714261.0
Does anyone think, as clearly I'm not going to get as far with Scotland as France, am I better off actually going to Edinburgh? Can you actually physically look through the books there?
No, you no longer get to handle the books because the books were at risk of damage from too much handling, but in Edinburgh you can look through digital images of all the births, baptisms, banns, marriages and deaths held by Scotland's People for a modest daily fee.
I hope that one day someone will index these records online, not for a company such as Scotlands People to get hold of and fleece the general population to get a glimpse at a page, but so they are online on the likes of My Heritage and Ancestry such as they are in Europe. Talk about daylight robbery and the absolute height of ineptitude.
If you had bothered to take the trouble to find out, you would have discovered that someone HAS indexed the Scottish records online. You can view ALL the indexes online, free of charge, at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. You only need to pay if you want to view the original records online. Something you don't get at all at Ancestry and MyHeritage.
Scotland's People is not a 'company'. It's an arm of the Scottish government, and it is they who decide the charges. And the income is reinvested in digitising more and more original records. Why should I, as a Scottish taxpayer, expect the public purse to pay for my hobby, when they have other and more pressing matters to address like welfare and education?
And when it comes to fleecing customers, Ancestry and MyHeritage are leading trailblazers. These are private companies who would have you believe that they have everything, and at the same time are peddling arrant nonsense in the form of fantasy family trees going all the way back to the Dark Ages. I am certainly not about to waste my money to access all these loads of tripe and claptrap, or to pay my money over to boost the profits of a foreign company.
I can't really comment on the availablility of French records except to say that the ones I have been looking for for about 35 years have so far eluded me. And it's not a language thing because I happen to speak, read and write French fluently, so I wouldn't have any problems finding the stuff if it were as readily available as you claim it is.
Next time you plan to explode as a newbie with a rant into an established community of mostly helpful people, I strongly recommend that you make sure you know what you are talking about before you let fly.
WHO in the absolute f do you think you are talking to people like that? The absolute gallll of folk. I'm psychic as they come and I know your type actually boke worthy. You cretin of a human being. Away and find some manners in that overfilled bag of superfluous bullshit you have just spouted. I did BOTHER to check actually and the sh*t aint on Scotlands People. I am APALLLLED at the posts on here and have requested the immediate removal of my account.
I dont mix with the likes of you thanks.
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Thank goodness for that!! Actually, if you are as psychic as you claim, you won't need any records at all to find your ancestors, they will come to you in the night!!
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I did BOTHER to check actually and the sh*t aint on Scotlands People.
Maybe the problem is with your research techniques?
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mac77782,
Congratulations on managing to trace your family history back to the 13th century in such a short period. Not everyone is so lucky, certainly not me.
Manners are an important part of the community of RootsChat. There is a wide range of opinions expressed here. We may not always agree with each other, but that is no excuse for abusing those with whom you disagree.
You mention that you are appalled at the posts on here. But you did choose to join. What a shame that your first and only contribution so far was to have a rather impolite and discourteous rant!
Best wishes
Nell
Gobal Moderator