Spending your money on Family research - where are those bargains?

[suttontrust]

We all agree that 1837online is lousy value - how many times have we spent a fiver and an hour not finding what we were looking for.  We can only hope it's soon redundant.  However, it's a worrying example of what can happen with poor transcription / indexing.  Pages are wrongly indexed but when you look at the image it's perfectly clear.  The same is true of Ancestry transcriptions at times, and you feel they must be done by someone who doesn't know the geography and doesn't have English as a first language.  So the outsourcing of transcription to Asia is going to lead to more waste of money.

[trish251]

Hi ST

Its the index concept of 1837 that makes it useless. If I have a man alive in 1851 and dead in 1861, I will get 40 or more hits on 1837. 35 of them will probably NOT have the name I am looking for. If FreeBDM was complete & I did the same search I would get 5 hits.

Being a bit thick it took me a double dose of 1837 before I realised how it works. I found it difficult to imagine that it really did work that way.      

Trish

[Irene Lilian Hunt]

Certainly the best I ever had was when in England in 1998/9 obtaining wills that totally opened up my husband's family for him.  And that was before the price went up!!  It's so long ago but (correct me if I'm wrong) I'm sure we only paid 35 pence or something similar.

The worst - same period - Nenagh, Ireland.  Local history society.  Went in gave them the names and ages of parents, names and ages of children.  Hoping we might get the maiden name of the wife/mother.  Yes they were happy to oblige - payment of twenty pounds up front.  Come back in half an hour!  Lovely we thought - off and had lunch - came back - they gave me a typewritten sheet with the names of children and their baptism dates. They were given the years for kids so it was a real difficult search.  Still didn't come up with a maiden name for mother or marriage.

Found this to be pretty standard in Ireland.  The attitude seemed to be if you are Australian or American then you can be ripped off.

Irene, Australia

[lizdb]

Just got to make a comment in defence of 1837online!!
It seems folk are disappointed with it because they treat it as a database i.e key in a name and it throws back what it's got on them.
But it isnt a database - it is a chance to view the actual indexes of ALL registrations of births/marriages/deaths throughout the country, without having to go up to London to do it in person.
If you go in person, you physically trawl through the books. On line, therefore, you do a virtual trawl through.
The reliability of Databases depends on how well the info was enterred, and most are incomplete at present. They are invaluable as a starting point, but I fail to see how anyone can 'do' Family History with any degree of accuracy, without using the BMD indexes at the FRC. And, therefore, I would have thought putting them on line at 1837online, thus making them so much more readily available to folk not near London, could only be a good thing!!

I'll get off my hobby horse now......!!!(Sorry)

[Arranroots]

Hi lizdb

I can see your point and have used 1837online with success for my less-common names, but when it comes to JONES, EVANS etc!! 

I enjoy a trawl through real records with the best of them - but can't afford the luxury with literally hundreds of hits.

Scotlandspeople is much easier to use in this sense.

My best value?  Gloucestershire FHS membership which has given me so much in the way of local knowledge - and their 100th edition magazine compilation at £5 is years worth of reading!

Worst value? Some of the Family History magazines which contain little of value and their free CDRoms which have trial products that fall over after 10 days!!

Arranroots 

[lizdb]

Point taken - agreed that 1837online would be prohibitively expensive for random Jones/Smiths etc!!!!!

But then - if you go in person and have no  info other than Jones or Smith, then the index books would not be a practical source.

We live in this world of clicking a button and expecting an answer. Family History just isnt like that. It can take years of searching, following up 'possibles' only to find they are a red herring, etc.

The various internet databases that have appeared in recent years are brilliant - dont get me wrong on that . But, because we have success in finding one bit of info from them, we get spoilt and expect the next bit to come in the same way! And before you know where you are it is easier to accept an instant piece of info, even if it doesn't seem completely accurate, (making excuses of age on census being wrong, or age at marriage being wrong, or mistranscription of name), rather than searching for all possibilities.

Whoops - seem to have got on to my other hobby horse!!
I'm just not having a good day - and where else can I let off steam in the same way as good old rootschat!

[Arranroots]

Oh lizdb!

Sorry to get you going again - you right, of course!

I hope your day improves - it is the weekend! (uniform to be washed, demanding family around all day, reduced access to Rootschat - roll on Monday!! LOL)

 

[trish251]

Hi LizB Tis my hobby horse too - but I will admit 1837 is easier than trawling through the St Cath's films that my local LDS centre has on offer! I found another centre that has the index on microfiche - a much more useable option & my alternative to 1837.

Irene mentioned the cost of wills - I had an email yesterday from a distant relative who said when he went looking for wills some years ago, it was 25p to read them and 75p to get a copy! As he was looking at a large number he read them & did his own transcription of the information he wanted.

In Qld, Australia where I live the local archives have wills over 30 years old. You can read them for free & copying is $1 per page. One of the nicest features is that post 1890 the Will papers contain a copy of the death certificate, so for $1 you get a copy of a death certificate (about $24 through the BDM Registry). The disappointment is that at some stage (I don't know when) wills for small estates did not have to be registered so only the wealthier of my forebears appear in the indexes.

Trish

[Irene Lilian Hunt]

Well this one has got us going hasn't it!!! 

Trish I too am in Queensland and wouldn't it be lovely if the English death certificates gave as much info as some of our Australian states?  I am currently awaiting two UK death certificates which may or may not have ages at death = which will at least give me something.  The Australian ones have given parents (most states) etc.  Depending on period all sorts of stuff.  Worth the money.

So therefore my other gripe is UK Death Certificates!!  Hardly worth the money are they?

Irene