Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Tuesday's Tip - Ancestry International Marriage Records are Free from April 16 to 21

This week's Tuesday's Tip is:  Use Ancestry.com to find international marriage records for FREE from April 16th to April 21st.


The URL for the free access is http://www.ancestry.com/cs/us/family-marriages and the searcher needs to be a registered user (but not a subscriber) to Ancestry.com.

I wondered just what was included, so I entered just the surname Richman into the Last Name field, and added "Wiltshire, England" to the Event location field.  The results:


The search found 16,521 matches in hundreds of databases - not just databases for England.  There are matches for historical newspapers, Pennsylvania Town and Church Records, Nevada marriages, and many more.  There are some databases with matches that are specifically for England, including the "Wiltshire, England, Marriages, 15378-1837" database - that was the one I really wanted:


There are 354 matches in the Wiltshire database, but as you can see, only the matched name is shown on the list - the date, location and spouse's name are not shown.  I found that was the case on all of the English databases I checked (I have only a US subscription, not a world subscription).

I clicked on one of the matches, and was taken to the subscription offer page.


Hopefully, this is just a mistake made by the programmers who didn't include the Wiltshire, England, Marriages database in the FREE International marriage collection.  What are the odds that I would pick - first link I clicked - one database that was not included?

I did check several other English marriage databases on the list and was able to see the record summary page, and the actual record image when available, on those other databases.

It is apparent to me that putting a location in the search fields on the special Marriages page (first screen image above) does not limit the matches to that location.  If I edit the search from the Search matches screen (second screen image above), the Location filter does work well.

Lastly, I noticed that there is a special price for the World Explorer Membership on the screen above - $16.95 for an annual subscription - that's $203.40, which is a significant reduction from the standard $299.40.  When I clicked through to the subscription payment page, the price was $199.

This free International Marriage Records deal would be great for U.S. researchers with significant European ancestry who have not started researching in, or have not captured record images from, the European country databases.  Go for it!

I'm going to use it for Canadian marriage records for my Seaver, Kemp, Sovereen, Hutchinson and other Loyalist family surnames.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/04/tuesdays-tip-ancestry-international.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Randy,

I performed the search following your steps exactly and ended up with the same results - except that my 354 results in the Wiltshire Marriages showed the spouse's name, parish name, and marriage date.

I DO have the world subscription, so maybe that's the difference.

In any case, if they say it's free, then you should be able to see everything. I don't get it.

If you would like me to send you screen shots of the search with all the information included, I will be happy to do so.