Author Topic: Ancestry vs MyHeritage vs FindMyPast  (Read 3808 times)

Offline emjsw

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Ancestry vs MyHeritage vs FindMyPast
« on: Monday 01 July 19 10:39 BST (UK) »
Hello,

I hope that this post finds you well?

I know that this has probably been asked before but as a UK user of Ancestry with minimal family in the US, Canada and Australia I am wondering which site to renew with.
I am currently using Ancestry and The Geneologist (the latter doesn't really give you more than Ancestry unless you had a lot of family in London). With Ancestry the parish registers are handy, I often find family who are not transcribed on the site by reading through photos of the registers.
I am wondering whether to renew with Ancestry or try another site for a year.

Please could anyone who uses the other sites tell me what they offer that Ancestry does not? I have lots of Brick Walls for releatives born on the 1700s and would like to try and break them. On Ancestry you have to rely on BMD select sometimes which means you can't look at the original parish registers which often contain further useful information which is not transcribed in the select files.

Best wishes,
Emma
Sweetland (Chard/Yarcoombe/Honiton)
Garret/Stacey (Somerset)
Boultern/Boulton (Reading)
Crowther (Wolverhampton/Wednesbury/Birmingham)
Myres (Wolverhampton)
Palmer (Nottingham)
Cosby (Leighton Buzzard/Woodstock/Kidlington)
Hope (Oxford/Kidlington/Woodstock)
Williams (Yorkshire/Conisborough)
Draper (Bow Brickhill)
Draper Smith (Bow Brickhill/Woburn Sands)
Smith (Woburn Sands)

Offline davidft

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Re: Ancestry vs MyHeritage vs FindMyPast
« Reply #1 on: Monday 01 July 19 10:55 BST (UK) »
Different sites have different collections of records therefore if you have been with Ancestry for a while and still have lots of brick walls it could be because the records that may help you are not on that site but may be on another.

Some public libraries have a subscription to one site or another so it would be worth checking out if yours does as then you can try out another site and see if you like it \ its any good. However, if you cannot do this have a look at the menus for the other sites and see if they have records that Ancestry don't and then its decision time to decide which result to go for. Some sites allow a free trial but you have to sign up first and cancel before the free trial ends if you don't want to take a subscription for a period. I don't advocate this approach but it seems to work for some people


Good luck
James Stott c1775-1850. James was born in Yorkshire but where? He was a stonemason and married Elizabeth Archer (nee Nicholson) in 1794 at Ripon. They lived thereafter in Masham. If anyone has any suggestions or leads as to his birthplace I would be interested to know. I have searched for it for years without success. Thank you.

Offline Kiltpin

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Re: Ancestry vs MyHeritage vs FindMyPast
« Reply #2 on: Monday 01 July 19 12:11 BST (UK) »
I have subscriptions to both Ancestry and Find My Past. 

My tree and my wife's tree  are on Ancestry - 
1 - Ease of inviting others to view and contribute to the trees.   
2 - Using Family Tree Maker, I can work all day off-line in some remote (wifi-less) churchyard or village and then sync to Ancestry when I get home. Saves doing the job twice with all the possible transcription errors removed. Especially handy when I am taking pictures of buildings and/or grave markers.   
 
I use Find My Past for Commonwealth and Foreign parts. 
 
1 - Ancestry has transcriptions, FindMyPast has the images! My first use of FindMyPast was one of their Remembrance Weekend  All Access events. In less than 48 hours, I downloaded 93 documents - most one page, but one will was 30 pages long. 
Ancesrty's transcription told me that John and Mary Smith had their son James baptised. The FindMyPast image showed me that they had three other children baptised at the same time, who I knew nothing about.   
2 - FindMyPast does not swamp me with US results. 
3 - The 1939 Register is excellent for seeing who was in the village at the same time - only yesterday I discovered what must have been the breakdown of a marriage. A married couple living at different addresses, with different people, only 100 yards away from each other. 
Ancestry will give me the reference for a source, but FindMyPast will give me the image of it.   
 
Regards 
 
Chas
Whannell - Eaton - Jackson
India - Scotland - Australia

Online coombs

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Re: Ancestry vs MyHeritage vs FindMyPast
« Reply #3 on: Monday 01 July 19 13:09 BST (UK) »
I have Ancestry and FindMyPast. Both sites have their pluses and their minuses.

I find Ancestry has lots of images, but surname variants are harder to find. Suffolk, Durham, Berks, Bucks and Sussex has very poor coverage on there but Essex, London, Dorset, Somerset, Oxfordshire etc is well covered now. FindMyPast has much more Suffolk records. FindMyPast has many images as well.

Census returns are much easier to search on FindMyPast than Ancestry to me anyway. I get to find many families that are harder to find on Ancestry.

FindMyPast has an easier surname search and a radius search for a surname which can be handy for finding potential relatives of the same name. However, their Soundex search can throw up irrelevant results. If I type "Obay" or "Obey" as a surname I get lots of results for "Bird". FreeREG throws up lots of Harper results for Harbord/Herbert (and variants) and the Harbord/Herbert results are swamped by Harpers.



Researching:

LONDON, Coombs, Roberts, Auber, Helsdon, Fradine, Morin, Goodacre
DORSET Coombs, Munday
NORFOLK Helsdon, Riches, Harbord, Budery
KENT Roberts, Goodacre
SUSSEX Walder, Boniface, Dinnage, Standen, Lee, Botten, Wickham, Jupp
SUFFOLK Titshall, Frost, Fairweather, Mayhew, Archer, Eade, Scarfe
DURHAM Stewart, Musgrave, Wilson, Forster
SCOTLAND Stewart in Selkirk
USA Musgrave, Saix
ESSEX Cornwell, Stock, Quilter, Lawrence, Whale, Clift
OXON Edgington, Smith, Inkpen, Snell, Batten, Brain


Offline emjsw

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Re: Ancestry vs MyHeritage vs FindMyPast
« Reply #4 on: Tuesday 02 July 19 23:12 BST (UK) »
Dear Coombs, Chas and Davidft,

Thank you ever so much for your help, advice and suggestions. It looks to me  like perhaps I could try FindMyPast for a while to see if it helps me breakdown some brick walls especially as it seems to have a slightly different search function.

I really appreciate you all taking the time to get in touch,

Best wishes,
Emma
Sweetland (Chard/Yarcoombe/Honiton)
Garret/Stacey (Somerset)
Boultern/Boulton (Reading)
Crowther (Wolverhampton/Wednesbury/Birmingham)
Myres (Wolverhampton)
Palmer (Nottingham)
Cosby (Leighton Buzzard/Woodstock/Kidlington)
Hope (Oxford/Kidlington/Woodstock)
Williams (Yorkshire/Conisborough)
Draper (Bow Brickhill)
Draper Smith (Bow Brickhill/Woburn Sands)
Smith (Woburn Sands)

Offline Craclyn

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Re: Ancestry vs MyHeritage vs FindMyPast
« Reply #5 on: Tuesday 02 July 19 23:15 BST (UK) »
It really depends on which record sets you need. I subscribe to all of these sites. I do most of my UK research on findmypast as I find it easier to search and it has more reliable transcriptions. However, there are records on Ancestry which are not on FindMyPast. I very rarely need to check out anything using MyHeritage records.
Crackett, Cracket, Webb, Turner, Henderson, Murray, Carr, Stavers, Thornton, Oliver, Davis, Hall, Anderson, Atknin, Austin, Bainbridge, Beach, Bullman, Charlton, Chator, Corbett, Corsall, Coxon, Davis, Dinnin, Dow, Farside, Fitton, Garden, Geddes, Gowans, Harmsworth, Hedderweek, Heron, Hedley, Hunter, Ironside, Jameson, Johnson, Laidler, Leck, Mason, Miller, Milne, Nesbitt, Newton, Parkinson, Piery, Prudow, Reay, Reed, Read, Reid, Robinson, Ruddiman, Smith, Tait, Thompson, Watson, Wilson, Youn

Offline emjsw

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Re: Ancestry vs MyHeritage vs FindMyPast
« Reply #6 on: Tuesday 02 July 19 23:26 BST (UK) »
It really depends on which record sets you need. I subscribe to all of these sites. I do most of my UK research on findmypast as I find it easier to search and it has more reliable transcriptions. However, there are records on Ancestry which are not on FindMyPast. I very rarely need to check out anything using MyHeritage records.

That is really helpful, thank you. I have found the wills, court and military records via fold 3 quite helpful on Ancestry but have found some of their bmd coverage not quite so good and some people are missing from transcriptions (but are in the parish registers). Ancestry DNA has not been very useful (I uploaded the data to MyHeritage and found a few links but couldn't look at them as I hadn't paid for a subscription). I think I will find FindMyPast really useful and haven't really heard from anyone that MyHeritage is helpful so thanks for sharing your experience.
Thanks for getting back to me.
Best wishes,
Emma
Sweetland (Chard/Yarcoombe/Honiton)
Garret/Stacey (Somerset)
Boultern/Boulton (Reading)
Crowther (Wolverhampton/Wednesbury/Birmingham)
Myres (Wolverhampton)
Palmer (Nottingham)
Cosby (Leighton Buzzard/Woodstock/Kidlington)
Hope (Oxford/Kidlington/Woodstock)
Williams (Yorkshire/Conisborough)
Draper (Bow Brickhill)
Draper Smith (Bow Brickhill/Woburn Sands)
Smith (Woburn Sands)

Offline cristeen

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Re: Ancestry vs MyHeritage vs FindMyPast
« Reply #7 on: Wednesday 03 July 19 00:03 BST (UK) »
You can access old newspapers via FindMyPast which I find especially useful :)
Newson, Steavenson, Walker, Taylor, Dobson, Gardner, Clark, Wilson, Smith, Crossland, Goldfinch, Burnett, Hebdon, Peers, Strother, Askew, Bower, Beckwith, Patton, White, Turner, Nelson, Gilpin, Tomlinson, Thompson, Spedding, Wilkes, Carr, Butterfield, Ormandy, Wilkinson, Cocking, Glover, Pennington, Bowker, Kitching, Langhorn, Haworth, Kirkham.

Offline emjsw

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Re: Ancestry vs MyHeritage vs FindMyPast
« Reply #8 on: Wednesday 03 July 19 00:22 BST (UK) »
You can access old newspapers via FindMyPast which I find especially useful :)

That is really good to know, thank you :)
Sweetland (Chard/Yarcoombe/Honiton)
Garret/Stacey (Somerset)
Boultern/Boulton (Reading)
Crowther (Wolverhampton/Wednesbury/Birmingham)
Myres (Wolverhampton)
Palmer (Nottingham)
Cosby (Leighton Buzzard/Woodstock/Kidlington)
Hope (Oxford/Kidlington/Woodstock)
Williams (Yorkshire/Conisborough)
Draper (Bow Brickhill)
Draper Smith (Bow Brickhill/Woburn Sands)
Smith (Woburn Sands)