Findmypast - Scotland

[buckhyne]

Hi

You can't really blame Findmypast (or Ancestry for that matter) for the lack of images of Scottish records as the Scottish Government only allows them on their own website, http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/.

Andy

That's true.
For less than £10 per month I think FindMyPast is value for money for the newspapers and the censuses 1841-1901.

[djct59]

I don't know whether my problem is with FindMyPast or with general record-keeping in England and Wales, but I find it as much use as a chocolate teapot, when compared to Scotlandspeople.

My records show that my grandmother had a cousin John. I have a very rough date of death for him, and am aware that the moved to London, married and had a family. Six credits on SP will gave me his name, date and place of birth, names of parents and date of their marriage.

Using FindMyPast offers about a tenth of that information for the same price; no birthplace or parent's names, so no means of verifying whether I have located the right person at all. I also find its search function can be remarkably poor.

[smudwhisk]

I don't know whether my problem is with FindMyPast or with general record-keeping in England and Wales, but I find it as much use as a chocolate teapot, when compared to Scotlandspeople.

My records show that my grandmother had a cousin John. I have a very rough date of death for him, and am aware that the moved to London, married and had a family. Six credits on SP will gave me his name, date and place of birth, names of parents and date of their marriage.

Using FindMyPast offers about a tenth of that information for the same price; no birthplace or parent's names, so no means of verifying whether I have located the right person at all. I also find its search function can be remarkably poor.

Other than the GRO indexes and Census and Westminster parish registers, FindMyPast don't have a lot on London.  The majority of non-Westminster, namely the majority of London (apart from what is now metropolitan London but was originally Essex), are on ancestry but they have gaps in them.  I agree FindMyPast's search engine for parish records isn't good, its better than it was since you can add parents names in the keyword box for baptisms but it doesn't work as well as perhaps it should.  Ancestry's is better.

Also, there are restrictions on parish records available after certain dates in the 20th century, for this info you would have to buy the marriage/death certificates but they marriage will only contain father's name and the death doesn't contain parent's names, and no birth certificates won't contain the parent's marriage details.  Unfortunately that is the case for all GRO certs from 1837.  At least from half way through 1911 they started adding the spouse's names to the marriage index entries.

I agree that the information is more limited on E&W certificates than in Scotland (I've one line from Fife), but then I find the SP index for post 1855 frustrating because, unlike with baptism records, you can't include the parent's names in the search index.  Its then more similar to the GRO index for birth certificates here.