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findmypast.com at WhoDoYouThinkYouAre LIVE

Memorial inscriptions: almost 1 million records added

Findmypast.com, in partnership with the Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS), has added nearly a million new memorial inscriptions to its Parish Records Collection. These records are the fruits of decades of transcription work by family historians nationwide.

Volunteers from different societies have visited graveyards and cemeteries in England and Wales, pulling back weeds, uncovering buried headstones and patiently deciphering weathered inscriptions.

In some cases the transcription is the only record that is left, as the headstone has completely weathered away or been destroyed.

The newly added records cover the following counties:

• Dorset
• Essex
• Glamorgan
• Lincolnshire
• Cheshire
• Northumberland
• Somerset
• Warwickshire
• Wiltshire

It is an ongoing project and there is still lots more work to do. If you would like to get involved, then contact your local family history society.

The records contain inscriptions from the 1600s to the twentieth century and will appear as part of the results when you search for a burial within the Parish Records Collection.

Some contain basic information such as parish and date of death, whereas others may contain much more information, depending on what was written on the headstone, and how much has survived the ravages of time.

Pricing for inscriptions for those with PayAsYouGo credits is either six, eight or 12 credits, depending on the amount of detail they contain. 

New military records on the way: WO96 & 97

The Chelsea pensioners’ records form one of the National Archives’ most popular sets of records in the reading rooms at Kew, and findmypast.com, in association with The National Archives, are currently scanning the WO97 documents (Royal Hospital Chelsea: Soldiers Service Documents 1760-1913) for online release.

The WO96 papers (War Office: Militia Attestation Papers 1806-1915) documents are also being scanned and it is hoped that both sets of records will be available online in their entirety by 2011. A total of around nine million images will be made available, which will be searchable by name.

Visitors to the National Archives at Kew will not be able to access those records that are being scanned. Documents are being scanned in batches and a scanning schedule  is available on The National Archives’ site.

Was your ancestor a Chelsea pensioner?

The 1841-1911 censuses are a useful cross-referencing tool that may reveal one or more of your ancestors as Chelsea pensioners. In-pensioners are the iconic gents in scarlet coats and tricorne hats who reside at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea. Census returns may indicate their Chelsea pensioner status under the ‘occupation’ column.

In other instances finding someone described as an ‘army pensioner’, or references to them being ex-army or ex-military, are all good clues that they might have been a Chelsea pensioner.

We will update the blog with further news and likely launch dates on both sets of records as we get them.

New military records on the way: WO96 & 97

The Chelsea pensioners’ records form one of the National Archives’ most popular sets of records in the reading rooms at Kew, and findmypast.com, in association with The National Archives, are currently scanning the WO97 documents (Royal Hospital Chelsea: Soldiers Service Documents 1760-1913) for online release.

The WO96 papers (War Office: Militia Attestation Papers 1806-1915) documents are also being scanned and it is hoped that both sets of records will be available online in their entirety by 2011. A total of around nine million images will be made available, which will be searchable by name.

Visitors to the National Archives at Kew will not be able to access those records that are being scanned. Documents are being scanned in batches and a scanning schedule  is available on The National Archives’ site.

Was your ancestor a Chelsea pensioner?

The 1841-1911 censuses are a useful cross-referencing tool that may reveal one or more of your ancestors as Chelsea pensioners. In-pensioners are the iconic gents in scarlet coats and tricorne hats who reside at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea. Census returns may indicate their Chelsea pensioner status under the ‘occupation’ column.

In other instances finding someone described as an ‘army pensioner’, or references to them being ex-army or ex-military, are all good clues that they might have been a Chelsea pensioner.

We will update the blog with further news and likely launch dates on both sets of records as we get them.

New parish records added for Lambeth

We’ve added over 31,000 burial records for the parish of St Mary, Lambeth, the former parish church of Lambeth (then in the county of Surrey). These cover the period 1777-1819.

Family Tree Explorer – new features

We have added a number of new features to Family Tree Explorer version 3 – here’s a quick summary for those of you using this version:

• Improved “import” support for different types of GEDCOM files. Although GEDCOM is a standard file format, files do vary very slightly depending on what software has been used to generate them: we have added support for more common types
• No limit on file size of GEDCOM to be imported
• Ability to delete an individual
• Ability to change the default/root individual
• Auto-capitalisation on most input fields
•  Faster start up when loading the application

Next on our list:

• Multiple relationship/spouse supported
• Help / User Guides

Fair Usage policy for subscribers

Just a clarification on the fair usage policy for subscribers which many have noticed in the revised Terms & Conditions.

These are not a new addition to the site and nor has the 1000 credit/month limit changed – in fact this has been in place since we started offering subscriptions in December 2005.  

Previously, the fair usage policy was in the separate “Subscription Terms and Conditions” which was only linked to from a few pages – all we have done is move it to the main set (with a link on every page) so it is easier to find, and removed some unclear wording so it is easier to understand.

Why do we have a fair usage policy? Well, it is certainly not a way to penalise or hold back our customers from conducting their personal family research.

We have this in place purely for the (very rare) cases where people might abuse the service, and it is designed to keep the price of subscriptions as low as possible for all family historians (and protect the copyright of owners of the records).

There are 3 general types of users who might exceed the fair usage limit.

1. Bona-fide family historians using the site for their own research. We understand that you might get carried away or have a really busy month which is why we set the fair usage at an average of 1000 credits per month over 3 months. In practice, hardly anbody (fewer than 0.5% of users) ever goes over the limit.
2. People using the site for commercial purposes. This includes both companies (probate genealogists, local authorities etc) and professional researchers conducting paid research. We have a separate charging structure for corporate users – by charging those who use a huge volume of records according to their use, we ensure that the general subscription price is kept as low as possible.
3. Thankfully rarely, we do get people who use the records intensively (or simply copy them wholesale) to create their own versions, often to sell on. Obviously this breaches the copyright of the record owners and needs to be protected against.

The fair use policy is designed to identify groups 2 and 3, and to allow unhindered access to the first group.

We always contact users  to establish the reason for abnormally heavy use of the site and if they’re just doing their own personal research, we obviously don’t penalise them. In practice, hardly anyone manages to exceed an average of 1000 credits per month over a three month period so we don’t end up making many phone calls.

We constantly review the limit, based on average usage of the site by all users.

So if we introduce new records with a higher credit charge, such as the BT27 passenger lists, we check to see if the 1000 credit limit should be raised. We will continue to keep an eye on this and make adjustments as necessary, in particular before the 1911 census is introduced as a subscription option.

Many services today (think of broadband packages) have similar fair usage policies and they work in the same way as ours i.e they are designed to catch those who use the service excessively (which would drive up the price or reduce the quality of service for the majority of users).

We hope this explains things – do contact Customer Support if you have any further questions.

1901 census – 2.1 million new records added

The findmypast.com 1901 census is expanding rapidly. Five complete counties have just been added to the site, providing over 2.1 million brand new records for you to search.

The new additions are:

• Bedfordshire
• Wiltshire
• Herefordshire
• Staffordshire
• Shropshire

We are now preparing another 5 counties for release shortly.