Using Find My Past website

[Forfarian]

Ive started using Find My Past recently but find it quite frustrating. Im struggling to find records that I can easily find on ScotlandsPeople and even Ancestry. Has anyone else found any difficulties with it? Ive been researching for years and have never had a problem such as these with other sites. (ScotlandsPeople, Ancestry, Forces War Records, MyHeritage)

You seem to be misunderstanding what all these web sites are and how they relate to one another.

As far as FindMyPast, Ancestry and MyHeritage are concerned, these are commercial web sites and they have NO original Scottish records at all, unless someone who has bought an original record has appended it to their family tree. These sites have indexes and transcriptions only. FindMyPast's transcriptions are better than Ancestry's (which are famous for their imaginative errors) but they are still far from perfect. FindMyPast also has indexes to Scottish events, but the originals are available only on Scotland's People, which is the official government source of Scottish birth, marriage, death and census records. .

See https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=714261.0

[Forfarian]

ScotlandsPeople is ridiculously expensive

Nonsense.

Just try getting an original certificate in England and Wales, Australia, New Zealand etc and then you will really find out what expensive means. One Scottish original document costs £1.50 compared with a minimum of £7.00 in E and W and anything up to about $40 in Australia.

And there are some parts of the world where you have to prove that you are a near relative before you are even allowed to order a certificate!

[carol80]

I agree with Forfarian. Scottish certificates are the best value for money even taking into account the exchange rate at the time. And the information contained is far better.
Stay Safe Stay Strong
Carol (NZ)

[BashLad]

Scottish certificates are cheaper and better quality but the point is I don't need to buy English certificates thanks to the mass of records which are available much cheaper on ancestry (et al). 

Scotlands people charge £1.50 per census return? Ancestry says Ive attached 12000 records to my tree. If even 20% of those are census returns this would be a lot of money in Scotland.

[Forfarian]

Scottish certificates are cheaper and better quality but the point is I don't need to buy English certificates thanks to the mass of records which are available much cheaper on ancestry (et al). 

You are missing the point entirely. Ancestry doesn't have Scottish records. It has indexes and transcriptions, the latter being notorious for their transcription errors.

Scotlands people charge £1.50 per census return? Ancestry says Ive attached 12000 records to my tree. If even 20% of those are census returns this would be a lot of money in Scotland.

But you cannot trust everything you find on Ancestry or FindMyPast or MyHeritage. If just 20% of the information you have attached is wrong or from an unverified source, how accurate is your tree?

Scotland's People is very cheap compared to the equivalent services in most English-speaking countries, and the original censuses can be consulted free of charge in many libraries, archives and family history centres. It is only 'expensive' if you compare it with the commercial web sites, which are very handy for pointers but cannot be relied on for accuracy.

[BashLad]

No, you're missing the point entirely.

My genealogy is England based and generally done on Ancestry; what that means is I look at Ancestry's scans of the original census returns and parish records - these are not transcriptions.

Some of my in-laws are Scottish and I've done some of theirs on Scotlandspeople's pay-per-view basis.

What this means in practice is that my English research is much broader and more accurate because I'm happy to pull up 10 different census returns if that's what's needed to rule out 9 of them whereas I wouldn't be willing to pay to do the equivalent in Scotland nor would I be willing to travel to libraries, archives and family history centres to do the same.

I realise Ancestry's Scottish records are transcriptions - the Scottish government took a different approach to publicising its records than the Westminster government - but the end result is that genealogy in England is much cheaper and I can go off on random tangents without worrying about the cost (unless you want to buy every redundant BMD certificate from the GRO that you don't really need).

[Guy Etchells]

No, you're missing the point entirely.

My genealogy is England based and generally done on Ancestry; what that means is I look at Ancestry's scans of the original census returns and parish records - these are not transcriptions.

Some of my in-laws are Scottish and I've done some of theirs on Scotlandspeople's pay-per-view basis.

What this means in practice is that my English research is much broader and more accurate because I'm happy to pull up 10 different census returns if that's what's needed to rule out 9 of them whereas I wouldn't be willing to pay to do the equivalent in Scotland nor would I be willing to travel to libraries, archives and family history centres to do the same.

I realise Ancestry's Scottish records are transcriptions - the Scottish government took a different approach to publicising its records than the Westminster government - but the end result is that genealogy in England is much cheaper and I can go off on random tangents without worrying about the cost (unless you want to buy every redundant BMD certificate from the GRO that you don't really need).

I understand the point you are making and agree about how costs could quickly mount in Scottish research, however a lifetime of family history research has proven to me that no record or certificate that contains information about a family member is a redundant record.

Perhaps it is my age and being used to travelling hundreds of miles and paying for hotels to even contemplate research before online records existed that I cannot understand anybody not travelling to libraries, archives and family history centres to do research such places are treasure troves of uncatalogued and in many places original records.
Cheers
Guy

[BillyF]

Oh, what bliss ! Going to the archives, I miss trawling through reels and reels of microfilms, being able to stop at random if you feel like; the joys of using microfiche and the juggling required to get the right view. It helps firstly to put the fiche in the right way!!!!

I was lucky when I started that I lived in Lincolnshire where most of my English research is based, but I`ve been fortunate to be able to go to Scotland to research my Scottish line.

While it`s easy to do research online, you`re missing out on the meeting in person of likeminded people.