RootsChat.Com

Hi Keely
Dorothy Couper was the daughter of Dorothy Heaviside, who was step-sister to Mary Lavinia Heavisisde, your direct ancestor.. We are both descended from John Heaviside, who was married at least twice = to Estyer Palmer (your branch) and Mary Wandless (my branch).
All the best
Gobbo

Hi
If I use my browser history I can get on to the old site and if I look for Alfred Harland, b 1866 +/- 5 in the North Riding I get two results, one of which is obviously my Alfred. If I then look at the transcript I get a table showing Alfred and his family, plus all their census details and address almost fitting one screen. If I use the new site I need to enter details about the "record collection" and the "record set" and I don't seem to find the option to specify "North Riding". This new search gives eight Alfred Harlands and when I identify my Alfred and look at the transcript I get a dreary column of data about Alfred with many blank spaces so that it extends over two screens and right at the bottom is a table of other household members but not their full data for which an additional charge is required. I find this quite upsetting.

Gobbo

Hi Cousin Paul
It was great to hear from you and be in touch with a long lost cousin. I knew Redcar as a child but have lived in the South most of my life and have a job sorting out the local names, Coatham, Saltburn, Marske and Loftus. I have checked his death certificate and Gt Grandfather is recorded as falling in the Royal Hotel, Redcar. This was nearer Coatham than Loftus.
All the best
Gobbo

Hi

I have just been playing with the British Newspaper Archive on Find my past (FindMyPast). I have a subscription so the cost of individual searches was not a problem.

The problems I did find were:
1. Find my past is still digitising the records so that much is missing but may appear in the next few months.
2. The digitisation seems to be the result of a computerised scan and so includes some garbage, which one needs to ignore.
3. The free search summary attempts to limit the information about the search target so that you will have to pay (or subscribe) to see the full text. An example might go " xdp of Lewis Chalmers. In Fraserburgh a son to ..." You can deduce from this that there is a birth entry for the family of Lewis Chalmers but nothing more until you pay to view.
4. After paying to view you will be shown the output from the computerised scan of the relevent sentence(s) and underneath this a display of a complete page with part highlighted, perhaps a paragraph, perhaps two or more columns.
5. There is a set of image control buttons in the top left hand corner of the image and you can use them to zoom in and pan about to find the relevant text. This can be a bit tedious on my lap top if I forget to use the given control buttons and just attempt to manipulate the image using the touch pad - when it shrinks to start size or slides off the screen.

One of the problems arises from the use of two names, the search on FindMyPast will not reveal articles on Lewis Chalmers if he is referred to in the article as L Chalmers and perhaps if Lewis is separated from Chalmers at a line break. You can work around this by searching for Chalmers but this will bring many false leads for other people named Chalmers. You can reduce these unwanted results by specifying a county and a narrow band of years to search but  at the moment FindMyPast only gives you the option to choose a year range and a county.

Despite the problems I do think the FindMyPast British Newspapers archive is worth searching now: poking around at it in the last three days I have discovered that none of the daughters of Lewis Chalmers lived beyond their thirties and I have also found a report of the inquest on my GGrandfather, which I had been seeking for several years.

Good hunting

Gobbo