Friday, April 22, 2011

UK and Canada Marriages FREE on Ancestry.com until 30 April

...
I was checking on new databases on http://www.ancestry.com/ this morning, and saw this box on the home page:



I vaguely remember seeing a note about this - it's apparently to honor the marriage of my cousin Prince William to Kate Middleton (apparently not my cousin).  [I did not get a wedding invite - did you?  I'm really disappointed!.]

You do need to be a registered user of Ancestry.com, but don't have to be a paid subscriber.
There are a number of databases included in this FREE offer that expires on 30 April, including:

Acadia, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1670-1946
Births-deaths-marriages, Christian messenger
British Columbia Marriage Index: 1872 to 1924
Canada Parliamentary Marriage and Divorces, 1867-1919
England & Wales, FreeBMD Marriage Index: 1837-1915
England & Wales, Marriage Index: 1916-2005
Mariages de l'Enfant-Jesus de la Pointe-aux-Trembles, 1674-1975
Marriage Notices of Ontario 1813-1854
Ontario Marriage Notices [1830-1856]
Ontario People: 1796-1803
Ontario, Canada Marriage Registers by Clergy, 1896-1948
Ontario, Canada Marriages, 1801-1928
Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967
Ontario, Canada, County Marriage Registers, 1858-1869
Ontario, Canada: Civil Marriage Registrations, 1869-73
Ontario, Canada: Roman Catholic Marriages, 1827-1870
Quebec Notarial Records (Drouin Collection), 1647-1942
Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967
Répertoire des mariages de Sainte-Cécile-de-Masham, comté de Gatineau : 1853-1963
Répertoire des mariages du Lac-Sainte-Marie (Comté de Gatineau) : (1881-1963)
Repertoire des mariages, Sainte-Anne-de-la-Perade, 1684-1900
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Genealogies


Note that the only UK marriage records included are the two collections of Civil Registration records - both of which are freely accessible on other websites.

Since I only have a US Deluxe subscription, this is an opportunity for me to go data mining for records and images of my Canadian and UK ancestors.  I found over 100 listings for "Seaver" in these records, and will add the new ones to my genealogy database soon (and will add sources for the ones that are not previously sourced!).

Do you have any ancestors, or collateral family members, that might be in those collections?  If so...

Genealogists -- start your data searching!

Update 9:45 a.m.:  Ancestry.com just added a number of marriage databases from Liverpool, and there are other marriage databases on their Card Catalog (e.g., London Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921) for England and Scotland.  Why aren't they included in the free offer? 

Updated 11 a.m.:  Added link to the collection page.  Removed the links to individual collections which didn't work for some reason because I copy/pasted them from Ancestry.com.  Thank you Banai!

1 comment:

Shane said...

But not the rest of the commonwealth? Still pretty fun!