Is Genes Reunited a purely English site?

[mistral]

Just noticed this scary note at the bottom of the message from the LDS!!
So nobody take any notice of my last post, OK!!!

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Should I go into hiding??

[Ina]

Mistral,

You may want to consider deleting your last two posts.

Ina

[mistral]

I'm not bothered!
What exactly could they do to me?

[JimM]

They could confiscate your old Osmonds LP's

[DavidWW]

If anyone is interested, this is the reply I got from the LDS when I asked them why Scotland was not included in the 1881 census in their website.

"Thank you for your email. Because of contractual agreements, the Scottish census records and the Scottish church records were made available elsewhere online. Therefore, they do not appear on FamilySearch Internet. To find Scottish census records online, go to the official Internet site (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk).
Note: Scotland does appear on the compact disc version of the 1881 British Census, and the Scottish church records are available at your local family history center in the FamilySearch 2.27 program. "

Personally I prefer the direct comment from GROS in Edinburgh to the effect that their current agreement with GSU, negotiated by the person making the comment, allows GSU to use the Scottish 1881 data on the FamilySearch.org site should GSU wish to do so.

David

[Andrew Cunningham]

I applaud GROS for setting up ScotlandsPeople and it is certainly a great asset to Scottish researchers but I have found it very expensive in terms of credits wasted on wrong certificates and census images due to the difficulty of pinpointing people especially those with common names! Everyone goes on about how expensive the English system but, in spite of each BDM certificate costing £7, I have wasted far less money researching my English ancestors!

I agree. ScotlandsPeople is a shameless cash machine for the government. As such, one might gently suggest that it perpetuates some unfortunate stereotypes about Scotland.

Thankfully FreeCen is getting to the point where it can be used to eliminate a lot of bad guesses as far as the censuses are concerned. But it is incredibly frustrating to search for Scottish BMD records for people with common names, even though, when they are found, they are exceptionally informative in comparison with their English and Canadian equivalents.

I have the 1881 LDS UK set, including Scotland, and it is well worth the small investment required.

[LesleyB]

Hi Andrew

But it is incredibly frustrating to search for Scottish BMD records for people with common names

On any site which works on a pay-per-view system, I think this is true of any indices - Scots, English or anywhere else for that matter. A frequently occurring name is always going to prove expensive unless you can narrow down the age, area and time window to a narrow field.

Best wishes
Lesley (with quite a lot of experience of "Smith" in English and Scots records )

[mistral]

They could confiscate your old Osmonds LP's :shock: :lol:

Thanks for that comment, Jim! I couldn't stop laughing for ages!!

Best wishes
Mistral

[mistral]

Hi Andrew

But it is incredibly frustrating to search for Scottish BMD records for people with common names

On any site which works on a pay-per-view system, I think this is true of any indices - Scots, English or anywhere else for that matter. A frequently occurring name is always going to prove expensive unless you can narrow down the age, area and time window to a narrow field.

Best wishes
Lesley (with quite a lot of experience of "Smith" in English and Scots records :roll: )

Hi Lesley

I take your point completely, but it is not the expense as such that bothers me so much as the needless expense incurred by a system that sometimes seems designed to hinder rather than help!
Good luck with your Smith research! Thankfully I have not got any of those so far!!

Best wishes
Mistral

[Andrew Cunningham]

I guess I'm used to looking through the Ontario BMD records on ancestry.com, where you can see as much as you want for the price of a single subscription. Same with all the census records on ancestry.com. And the original images of the Canadian censuses are available free of charge over the Internet, with indexing done by volunteers.

And I think--to return to ScotlandsPeople--that charging the "customer" twice where a single household happens to be split between two census pages is a bit much. The lack of ability to browse neighbourhoods without running up a huge bill is a real hindrance to research.

Anyhow, I will stop complaining and try to think of yet another strategy for finding my John and Mary MacDonald.