This post is to provide a 'snapshot' of web based tools available to help with genealogy research in Australia and Britain; with a slight skew towards frugal research. I am endeavouring to remove the 'fog' surrounding websites and their products, which I encountered in the beginning. Understanding this material will save you weeks, even months of confusion, and wasted time!
What is Genealogy Research?
Answering this question can give us some criteria to use to evaluate the tools available (refer separate post).
Genealogy is defined as:
"An account or history of the descent of a person or family from an ancestor; enumeration of ancestors and their children in the natural order of succession; a pedigree."
(Websters 1913 Dictionary)
Basis of Snapshot
You would find variation between "snapshots" dependent upon individual experience and the target research area. This snapshot gives you a place to begin. It may not look like much, but once you look at the "portal" websites you will understand. The list is partly based on an "UnlockThePast,com.au" exploration of where family genealogies are uploaded by users (users "voting with their feet"). This exploration shows the providers and the loyalty extended to them by users.
If you want larger font or image, hold down your "Ctrl" key and press the "+" key. Or use the zoom / enlarge feature in your browser: In Firefox: Menu>>View >> Zoom.
Core Resources
Nick Barrett ("Who Do You Think You Are, Encyclopedia of Genealogy"; HarperCollinsPublishers" (sic); 2008) describes three types of "core" web-resources:
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| Portal in Sci-Fi Movie |
- Dataset Websites: supplying images of Birth, Death and Marriage records; or indexes to those records;
- Portal Websites: Genealogy or family history websites that provide advice: or provide links to other resources;
- Network Websites: providing opportunity to join networks of other users involved, or interested, in family history research; individuals talking to groups of users.
The sites nominated will be classified using these terms.
Online Review
There is an online review of the "10 Top 'Genealogist' sites: by No1Reviews.com. It not only provides a description of a website's services, but adds a detailed opinion, which outstrips some other reviews. Because of its population size, strong economy; local interest in family history; and entrepreneurial spirit, the USA is the largest data consumer. So most websites are biased toward the US, in terms of their orientation, collections; and search results. For example, If you are not concentrating it is easy to do a search in FamilySearch Family Tree without any filters and get loads of American data. Yeeee haaa! You will be overwhelmed. (A filter is used to either
exclude certain hits or only include certain hits from a web analytical
tool.)
In this post, sites aimed primarily at US users have been 'filtered out', where practical. In some cases there is no option but to include them (major data site). Most service providers have sister sites devoted to specific countries and it is a research in its own right to determine the differences between them. The main difference is a different, welcoming 'front door'; some "window dressing", to ensure you feel you are in the right place for your country, but the data is on the same server.
So Many Sites!
Which site is the best? Who do I sign up with? Well, "Where are you searching?" In some instances, like searching church records, the best option may be to purchase a CD from one of the service providers of UK parish Records. The key is to find out "who-has-what" data for your target area before anything else! Scan what you know of your family origins to determine a target search area. Then simply do a search on FamilySearch Wiki, like this:
Case Study 1: St Dustan Stepney Parish
This graphic from FamilySearch shows the distribution of available data between
various online service providers for Stepney Parish in Middlesex, England. As they say : "A picture is worth a thousand words."
Typical Example
If you examine the distribution-mix of images and indexes in this example, it will take some of the mystery out of online data, generally. Sites do not always have the "record" you want; only the index (see post explaining the difference between indexes and images, September 2013). You should examine the nature of the collection you propose to search!
Something I wish I knew from the very beginning is that: the default meaning of 'parish', when examining the records for England and Wales, is the area over which a local church in the Church of England
had ecclesiastical jurisdiction (click to view video explanation). But, other churches also have parishes; for example the Catholic Church.
Role of Church of England
The Church of England was, and remains, the state sponsored church in England. Before civil registration began it was invested with the responsibility of recording birth, death and marriage records, by Thomas Cromwell, in 1538. In 1920, The Church of England in the province of Wales, however, became an independent member of the Anglican Communion; no longer a state sponsored church; and was re-badged as the "Church of Wales", with separate dioceses.
Elsewhere in the UK
There is some thing else you need to know from the outset. In Ireland the Church of England was called the "Church of Ireland". The Scottish branch of the Anglican Communion is the Episcopal Church of Scotland. But in the mid 1700s it was reduced to a minority save in a few corners of the west and north-east of Scotland, by the state-sponsored-church being changed to the Church of Scotland, which was based on Presbyterianism: See history: "Scotland's Old Parish Registers: How to Access, Use, and Interpret", a video on FamilySearch.
Levels of Local Church
There is another level of local church in the Church of England, called a "Chapelry". A parish may have one or more chapelries. A Chapelry is literally the bounds or jurisdiction of a chapel. Frequently does not have a licence to perform marriages. This may explain why a bride did not get married in her local chapel.
Non-Conforming Churches
For many years in England and Wales, until 1899, only the Church of England had the right to record official data. From 1899 the "Non-Conforming" Churches could send their records directly to the General Registry Office in London. In August, 2013 Ancestry put online the private Registers of these other Churches: England & Wales, Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial Registers, 1567-1970 .
Service Providers for Indexes and Images in Stepney
For the English Parish of Stepney St Dunstan (aka "St Dunstan Stepney"),
Ancestry.co.uk has indexes and the images primarily for the 1800s; and a smattering of other providers have indexes for the other periods (don't know the difference between 'index' and 'image'? Go to another Post here).
From the graphic, the service providers for the parish records are as follows (check the exact date ranges):
Note that if you mistype any well-known genealogy-website name you will get a lookalike! One option is to check the "About" feature, among other things, to make sure you have the right one!
Changing Boundaries of Parish
FamilySearch Wiki will show you the boundaries of a Church of England parish over time (refer "Maps and Gazetteers" -- in this case, scroll down the "Stepney St Dunstan" Wiki page -- accessed in the last link). You can even overlay boundaries for different time periods and see what changed! Be prepared to "drill down" to get what you want. If your parish is not covered, then go to GENUKI UK or Wikipedia. So, you might want to start by looking at the profile for YOUR target area. Make sense?
Census Records
FamilySearch Wiki article also provides the online location of Census indexes and images for Stepney St Dunstan from 1841 to 1891. The list of providers in this case is:
- FamilySearch;
- FindMyPast;
- Ancestry;
- The Genealogist.co.uk; and
- FreeCen (check coverage).
Case Study 2: The Relevance of Parish Boundaries to Census Districts
Parish boundaries in 1841 are also relevant to your understanding data in the 1841 Census. Consider the case of Greasbrough Chapelry in the Rural Deanery of Doncaster, in the Diocese of York, Yorkshire.
Greasbrough eventually became a large parish encompassing the town of Greasbrough; a number of rural hamlets; and kilometers of rural land along the western edge of the town of Rawmarsh (see inset). Rawmarsh town was in a separate parish. As Rawmarsh grew it extended into the rural land in the parish of Greasbrough. The 1841 England Census was then based upon these parish boundaries.
The census reported inhabitants of this 'extension' of urban Rawmarsh alongside data for the town of Greasbrough, without any obvious distinction that these residents were living in the town of Rawmarsh. Researchers were unaware that some families had moved to Rawmarsh to take advantage of the work available. The social and geographical context of our ancestors enables a researcher to identify new sources of information about the family, such as coal mining records, employer records, and newspaper reports.
A twist in the story is that often births in this "extension" of Rawmarsh were recorded not in Greasbrough but in the Rawmarsh parish records. There was a simple way of unlocking a secret like this and that was to read the 'Cover Page' for the "Enumeration District" within the 1841 Census. When you are shown an image page in a Census District, wind the pages back to the beginning of the District record to see the Cover. Unfortunately for one family line from this urban 'extension' of Rawmarsh, it was 30 years after the initial documentation of the 1800s family genealogy, and after the publication of the Family History, before the author discovered it.
A footnote to this case study, is that the parish records are now held in the City of Sheffield Municipal Archives, as York is in the region of Sheffield. This is an indicator of the influence of changes of local, civil administration upon where local copies of records are to be found.
Snapshot of Websites
Rates well among Australians because of its large number of datasets; high-volume, user
message-boards; best annual subscription (Nick Barrett); and large range of Australian
Collections, including Postal Directories. You can access UK data exclusively by selecting the UK collections (Menu>>Search>>CardCatalogue, and deselect the "Australia Only" check box).
Ancestry also has a set of
training videos and research guides. Beware saving their suggestions ('shaking leaf' research tips) to your tree. Instead save them to your "Shoebox" until you can prove them.
More people put their tree on Ancestry than any other site. This graphic shows its dominance over its competitors. Of a sample taken by "UnlockThePast,com" (2013), 43% had created Ancestry public trees; and 23% private trees. GeneReunited had 31% of trees; FamilySearch Family Tree 7.3%; and 23% had no online presence at all.
| Online site | Votes | Percent voters |
| Ancestry - private trees | 61 | 24.7 |
| Ancestry - public trees | 106 | 42.9 |
| Ancestry World Tree | 8 | 3.2 |
| FamilySearch | 18 | 7.3 |
| Findmypast | 20 | 8.1 |
| GenCircles | 8 | 3.2 |
| GeneaNet | 5 | 2.0 |
| GenesReunited | 76 | 30.8 |
RootsWeb is a free, sister-site of Ancestry where users share their genealogies.
"The main purpose is to connect people via WorldConnect so that they can help
each other and share genealogical research; only returning results where such information has already been researched and entered by another user". (from No1Reviews.com).
Conceptually, this is the equivalent of using 'Ancestral File' in FamilySearch. Regarding RootWeb , No1Reviews.com comments:
"The search results you get may be a little hit-and-miss depending on how
many other genealogists' family trees interact with your own. Most resources on
RootsWeb.com are designed to facilitate such connections" (from No1Reviews.com).
Be aware that Ancestry has many "fingers in the pie". Service providers endeavour to compete with one another, at many levels . So don't be surprised if you find yet again a website which is an 'outreach' or tentacle of Ancestry, or FindMyPast, in disguise. Doh! Not that there is anything ethically wrong with that. It is just that your hopes of finding another cheaper provider will be dassssshed many times.
2. GenesUnited has over 11 million family trees, but has a smaller number of record Collections (compared with Ancestry). Some users have described it as "restrictive". "It is unlikely that this site will appeal to a serious genealogist
or family history researcher, particularly if they want to explore the
history of their family outside of the UK" (source: No1Reviews.com). That said, paid membership on
GenesReunited is considerably cheaper than other sites.
3. CoraWeb: portal.
4. FamilySearch Family Tree - free dataset and portal: Rated No 3 in the world, in terms of traffic. It changes so fast it is impossible to guarantee the following analysis is completely accurate, but here goes.
Contact with Other Users
Subject to that caveat, it does not offer separate access to a "network" of users in Australia (individuals talking to groups of users; a user Forum is only available in USA. - see menu here ). It is, however, a formal, collaborative effort in creating shared genealogies. Also, Family Tree offers contact with other users on an 'individual-to-individual' basis through the "sources" interface (email contact), but it is "hit-and-miss"
whether you will be able to contact fellow researchers, due
to the frequent expiry of email addresses. If FamilySearch required users to
continually update email addresses, it would improve user collaboration.
Finding Images
To avoid frustration, you should be aware that the images of the original certificates of BDM records, or of census pages may not be packaged with the free indexes on FamilySearch; although digitised images are being added progressively. To see the list of Historical Records containing images,
login to FamilySearch Tree, and go to
Menu>>Search>>Records; filter by country; and tick the box,
bottom left, which returns "Only collections with images". Note that this does not mean all records in that collection have images; only a proportion of them.
Where the image is not available, indexes point you to commercial sites.
FamilySearch has arrangements with other service providers for you to get record images (no financial benefit), as in the Case Study above. You don't know what that means? (see post in this blog:"What are indexes?").
Note that when you access Census data in FamilySearch, you may be looking at transcriptions from the indexes; not the images of indexes; and not the images of census pages, except in the USA. Such transcriptions do not include the occupation and address of a person in a census household. To get these details, to help corroborate your research, you will likely need to find the image on a commercial site.
By tracking down the images, you can more easily do "cluster searches" for relatives in the same locality (see post "What is Genealogy Research?", for more on 'cluster searches').
Products
The FamilySearch Tree site comprises multiple products, with the overall intent to create a single, common-pedigree:
- Family Tree system comprises massive, co-joined, peer-reviewed pedigrees; less impressive, not so co-joined (i.e.: "stand-alone") pedigrees; and a massive number of unlinked-couplets comprising a set of parents having one child in one event. e.g. birth or marriage.
- Memories:
- Records: a large number of indexed, civil and parish collections; un-indexed parish collections; transcriptions from indexes; images behind some of these indexes (indicated by Icon in a search result); and links to images held on "partner" (commercial) sites;
- Genealogies of earlier generations, under sub-menu item: "Genealogies" (see above). These are perhaps best summarised as submitted during FamilySearches' pre-internet days. The Production date of individual "Ancestral Files" ranges from 1978 to 2000. Data sources are not included. Pedigree Resource File started from 1999; and data sources may be included. There were often duplicates of persons in Ancestral Files but these have been merged. FamilySearch reports that:
"The merge process was an automated process; sometimes it worked well; sometimes it didn't."
With regard to 'previously done research', Ancestral File and Pedigree Resource File, FamilySearch comments:
"While there is no guarantee that the information in these collections is correct, is often easier to validate the information that you find here than to start over again".
You may unwittingly tap these genealogies, which often have less 'sources' and less connectivity to the authors.
If you seeking after 'records', check you are searching "Records" collection (see first Menu above),
but don't exclude these 'Genealogies' from your 'tool box' .
"Products" cont./
- Libraries of digitised, historical publications and writings, comprising "Catalog" and "Books" (see first Menu above); complemented by links to publications offline. Online are "more than 100,000 digitized genealogy and family history publications
from the archives of some of the most important family history libraries
in the world". The collection includes family histories, county and
local histories, genealogy magazines, how-to books, gazetteers, and
medieval histories and pedigrees. You will want to do a search of the Family Histories, Magazines and pedigrees to see if you can find a legitimate link.
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| Wiki Panel |
- Self Learning Centre, available to all through the "Get Help" button, covering all aspects of genealogy research; including guides to doing research in specific countries (with videos);
- Direct Research Assistance, accessed through "Get Help" in the top menu; in the form of "Call-Centre" advice (Australia: 1800-083-293); "Chat Line": when volunteers are available; and queries by email. But be organised and prompt, or you will be disconnected smartly. There is a user Forum in the US, but not in Australia.
- An open Wiki, FamilySearch being the main contributor (see inset). If you want to know if FamilySearch has indexes for a particular parish, this is one of the places you can go.
Quote from a FamilyTree user regarding the importance of having a separate storage place for your data:
"If someone comes in & makes changes that are questionable, it is
necessary to have a place to go that contains your records & not the
whole worlds".
5. FindMyPast-
dataset, portal and network (see inset).
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| FindMyPast Front Panel |
Always do a complementary search on FindMyPast. For one, it has large collections with images. Also, it has a markedly different search engine, which is refreshing and an
advantage when you need another opinion. FMP has the option of a
better, sophisticated, pay-as-you-go system (Nick Barratt). It is easy to chew up your credits
just looking at indexes. Read the rules carefully.
It has the "UK's largest collection of parish records from 1538". Unique feature is
that you can search census records by street names to find successive generations in the same house!
9. GENUKI: UK portal; and dataset provider in some instances (e.g. Yorkshire).
10.State Libraries Australian States:portals ; copious guides to Australian research; free access to
international service providers, like British Newspapers, Ancestry and FindMyPast; and microfiche State datasets. The State Library usually provides access to all. Local Council libraries may, on the other hand, only provide access to Ancestry.com's library-version site.
Note that this "library version" of Ancestry does not include all the features of a fully paid membership, but enough to do effective research. For example, you will not be able be to do internal messages to owners of private trees.
9. BritishGenealogy.com: British-Genealogy Com s British Genealogy Forum: The most enjoyable experience on the internet: will give you individual help to break down a "brick-wall". Other sites offer 'user-community' but this is where it is best organised, most knowledgeable, and best delivered. Just make sure you look at the subject matter in a 'thread' before you commit your query to that thread, or you will be "chatted"!
10. The British Newspaper Archive: This is surprisingly easier than you would imagine. You can check shipping details here; as well as family notices. Check with your local or state libarary to see if they can organise free use.
11. Wikipedia: has articles on your place of interest and many genealogical terms; like "parish".
12. A Vision of Britain Through Time: Historical Maps, Historical Places; Statistics, Census Reports and Guides.
13. British History Online : institutional and government records, papers, assize court proceedings; and an alternative description of places (c/f "Vision of...".);
14. Genealogy in Time: An amazing search engine to generate fresh, alternative leads! Also, reviews websites (not just USA ones). and provides top 100 list.
