Wednesday, July 25, 2012

International Record Collections on FindMyPast.com

After my FindMyPast.com post yesterday (FindMyPast.com Debuts - A Pretty Good Deal), I wondered what record collections were available to search on the site.  I asked Brian Speckart, the Marketing Manager of North America for brightsolid Online Publishing, Inc.  Brian provided this list of the International Collections available on www.FindMyPast.com:


English, Welsh and Scottish Records
  • The most complete England, Wales and Scotland census collection available online
  • The most complete online index of birth, marriage and death records, including records of births, marriages and deaths at sea published in association with The National Archives.
  • Passenger lists of ships leaving the UK 1890 – 1960, bound for long-haul destinations such as the USA. These records were published in association with The National Archives.
  • British Army service records 1760 – 1915. These records were published in association with The National Archives.
  • Merchant Navy Seamen records 1835 – 1857 and 1918 – 1941 – records of men and women who worked on British merchant ships. They weren’t necessarily British people - up to 70% of ships’ crews were made up of international seamen. These records were published in association with The National Archives.
  • Over 46 million parish baptisms, marriages and burials from across England and Wales dating back to 1538 – many of which can only be found online at findmypast.co.uk
  • A rapidly growing collection of local authority records dating back to 1700, including school admissions, workhouse registers and apprenticeship indentures.
  • Records dating back to 1200
Ireland
  • Millions of unique Irish Prison Register and court records
  • Unique Land & Estate records
  • Irish Vital records dating back to the 13th Century
  • Military & Rebellion Records
  • 2 Million Irish directories
  • Rare and unrivaled specialist records
    • The Landed Estate Court Rentals (1850-1885) – 500,000 records
    • The Irish Prison Registers (1790-1912) – almost 3 million records
    • The Petty Session order books (1851-1910) – Currently 1.5 million, second batch of 4 million coming in early June, another 9 million to follow this year.

Australia and New Zealand
  • Over 700,000 cemetery records from across Australia
  • A vast collection of Australian and New Zealand electoral roll records
  • Over 15 million government records including government gazettes, police gazettes and blue books
  • Millions of religious records
  • Over 10 million directories and almanacs to aid your search
  • A large collection of Military records that cover the Boer war, WWI & WWII, Maori campaigns and more
  • Rare and unrivalled specialist records – perfect for adding fine detail to your ancestors' lives
British Newspaper Archives (Coming before the end of the year)
  • Explore 100s of local, regional and national newspapers from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland
  • 3 Centuries of newspapers
  • 5 million pages available now 1000s of new pages added everyday
  • 10 year project – 40 million pages
  • Adding additional dimensions and details to your family history
    • In depth and colorful information about your ancestors. Tells you much more information than a record
    • Understand the context in which your ancestors lived
  • Search and browse by keyword(s), phrase, date, newspaper title and place
My thanks to Brian and FindMyPast.com for providing this information.

I will be reviewing what information in England that may be helpful to my own research on FindMyPast, and I hope that other USA geneabloggers will do the same.  Since I don't have an Ancestry World subscription, I can't compare the record collections of Ancestry and FindMyPast.  Has anyone done that in an organized manner?

Disclosure:  I have no financial interest in FindMyPast.com, or a subscription to it.  I received 100 free credits from them yesterday.  I plan to pay for a World Subscription soon.  I have received gifts at conferences from brightsolid, which has not influenced my objective analysis and opinions.

1 comment:

Fax said...

I'm disappointed that all these companies fail to recognize that names of collections are virtually useless to those of us who are not intimately familiar with the places being researched. Every contents listing or index should include, at the very least, the dates and the county/parish/country included in the collection. Only then can we fairly evaluate the potential value of the collection to us.
Doris