Free Find My Past this weekend

[phil56]

I made as much use of FindMyPast free weekend as time allowed. I spent about 90% of my time searching within the Newspaper Archive section and found many interesting articles relating to my ancestors that helped to fill or confirm a few gaps and assumptions. Mostly the system ran relatively quickly considering the load.

Now I am considering my strategy as I already have WW membership to Ancestry and will continue with that. Normal BNA subscription is I think £80 a year, and normal FindMyPast subscription is £100 a year. So I am deciding whether to go for a year of FindMyPast which I think includes 100% of the The BNA material, so full FindMyPast access is only £20 more than full BNA access standard price. Can anyone confirm that ?

Alternative is to go for the £40 deal now on BNA and then just use local records office if I particularly need FindMyPast for anything else, where it is free.

Thoughts anyone ?

Phil.

[bugbear]

Was I using it wrong? The FindMyPast search seems to only allows a single individual?

I get GREAT benefit from the Ancestry ability to add "Family Members" to a base individual (e.g. spouse, mother, sibling etc).

I couldn't even look up a wedding based on both surnames!!

Very poor advert for them, if this is their search facility.

 BugBear

[BumbleB]

You may have to enter the other spouse surname under "Optional Key Words".  I've just done that, and it worked. 

[rayard]

I have a UK. subscription, but I couldn't get many World results, just a black screen and an apology notice kept appearing. I complained but the free period has now passed.  Even proven results didn't arrive.
What a let-down when they can't even provide for paying customers, never mind the free ones!
rayard.

[panic]

I have a UK. subscription, but I couldn't get many World results, just a black screen and an apology notice kept appearing. I complained but the free period has now passed.  Even proven results didn't arrive.
What a let-down when they can't even provide for paying customers, never mind the free ones!
rayard.

I'm a UK only and was able to access both Irish newspapers and worldwide records e.g. Australian electoral records. Unfortunately I didn't have much spare time this weekend.

[barryd]

I was getting the black screen and an apology notice. It happened a few times but I tried again and received the information I was looking for the second time. Possibly it was an overload their end.

[Jeanette H]

Hello RootsChatters,

We had a very successful weekend 'Digging Up The Past', and finding many 'Missing Links'.
We accessed both sites - 'findmypast.co.uk' and 'findmypast.com.au'

There was a few little hiccups at times, which is only to be expected, given the number of people who would have been trying to access the sites.  With patience we worked through.  I am sure even now they will be working through to overcome these minor problems.

It certainly has got all the various research sites thinking, and perhaps a little concerned, as to what people want when they do their Research. 
As there were many Surveys flying around, from 'Scotland's People', 'Ancestry' and 'findmypast'.

When you Log-Off from 'findmypast' you can participate in a Survey, this may help to give some feedback directly to them, which can only benefit everyone in the long run.

Well done 'Findmypast', thank you. 
Looking forward to the next 'Special Weekend'. 
In the meantime we are still sifting through the various records.

It would be great if Scotland's People, could give us a 'Special Weekend'.

We currently have 'Pay As You Go' - Subscriptions to 'Scotland's People' and 'Findmypast', but only use 'Ancestry', when they have open access.

Jeanette H.

[Roobarb]

I had a very successful weekend, was able to look through loads of Merchant Seamen records and found one which was very useful. I also downloaded a number of parish records. The trick for people who found the site too busy is to stay up a bit later, it's much quicker after midnight. 

I thought the plug would be pulled promptly at midday, I was frantically looking up records in the last fifteen minutes but it was actually 12.10 when the free access went. 

I agree with Bumble B re Optional Key Words, I found some records for a particular village by entering its name in this field.

[philipsearching]

findmypast ran slow and crashed several times, but persistence paid off.  I had a tremendously successful weekend replacing much of the information I had lost when my external drive died a few years ago (before I had finished backing up on disks).  Then I added new data from the 1911 census.  Then I did some research for other Rootschatters.  Then I started tackling my biggest brick wall.  Then time ran out! 

I know I am going to be bombarded with e-mails urging me to subscribe to genealogy sites (bl**dy cookies!  - the websites still manage to grab my details before I delete them!) - but the benefits outweigh the inconvenience. 

A few times I ran a search on censuses and FindMyPast returned "no matches" - so I tried again ten minutes later using the same search and found several matches.  I presume this was due to system overload

My poor long-suffering wife hardly saw me this weekend!  But I promised I still love her      and she gets to choose where she wants to go for a weekend break before Christmas, so I might be forgiven if I'm good. 

Philip