Frequently Asked Questions about the transfer to findmypast.co.uk

An online partnership between the Federation of Family History Societies and findmypast.co.uk was announced in a press release on 1st September 2007. This page attempts to answer some of the questions that may concern users. Business carried on as normal on the current service until 2 March 2009 when all the data to be hosted by findmypast.co.uk had been transferred and made available on their website.

Some 10 million records from National Burial Index became available on findmypast.co.uk at the end of November 2007 and much more information for births/baptisms, marriages/banns and deaths, burials has been made available since then. The finishing touches are now being added to the memorial inscriptions and other data while some societies are providing 1851 census to findmypast.co.uk.

Any remaining credit will be available to be used on the new service.

return to top Who is findmypast.co.uk?

findmypast.co.uk (formerly findmypast.com and 1837online.com) was the first company to make the complete General Register Office (GRO) birth, marriage and death indexes for England & Wales available online in April 2003. It was part of the Title Research Group, which provided professional genealogical services for over 40 years. It is now Brightsolid Online Publishing Limited part of brightsolid (formerly Scotland Online).

Following the scanning and indexing of over two million images from the GRO, this UK company launched the first web site to allow the public easy and fast access to the complete indexes, which until then had only been available on microfiche film in specialist archives and libraries. In April 2007, findmypast's parent company Title Research Group received the prestigious Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation 2007 in recognition of their achievement.

findmypast.co.uk has subsequently digitised many more family history records and now offers access to over 500 million records with a few dating as far back as 1664. This allows family historians and novice genealogists to search for their ancestors among comprehensive collections of military records, census, migration, occupation directories, and current electoral roll data, as well as the original comprehensive birth, marriage and death records.

return to top Why transfer the data to findmypast.co.uk?

The Federation of Family History Societies and its services company felt unable to invest sufficient time and money in the considerable resources that would be necessary to enable FamilyHistoryOnline to continue as a viable alternative to other commercial sites.

The hosting of FamilyHistoryOnline by findmypast.co.uk is providing greater access to this valuable information and bringing the data to a wider audience worldwide. It will also produce greater returns to the family history societies who own this data, and they will be able to use this income to support their educational, project and other work.

return to top When did the FamilyHistoryOnline service close?

The service closed at noon (GMT) on Monday 2nd March 2009.

The FamilyHistoryOnline web site now provides a link to take you to the findmypast.co.uk web site to access the data.

The first burial records transferred became available at the end of November 2007 and the transfer of existing data was completed by the end of February 2009. Until closure, all the data continued to be available on FamilyHistoryOnline.

return to top Is all the data available on findmypast.co.uk?

Almost all the data will be available on findmypast.co.uk in one form or another. However, in some cases the census indexes and transcriptions from family history societies are no longer available because findmypast.co.uk have already made similar indexes available and support them with images. Much of this society information will continue to be available in other formats, such as CD-ROM and some organisations could seek alternative ways of continuing to make it available online.

The data that will not be transferred will include:

  • Strays (records of people found out of place), particularly census strays that can now be found more easily by searching the full national sets of census indexes
  • Very small databases where the cost of the transfer will outweigh any possible financial return to societies
  • Databases where the data is in a very difficult format
  • Databases where the contributing family history society, organisation or individual does not wish to sign the new agreement with the Federation of Family History Societies.

return to top What will it cost to use findmypast.co.uk?

findmypast.co.uk offers a choice of ways of accessing the data: pay-per-view or subscription. Payment can be accepted online by credit card or by ‘BT Click&Buy’, and vouchers are available from an international network of stockists including libraries, archives, family history societies and by mail order. The costs of viewing individual records have been reviewed to bring them into line with other datasets.

return to top What happened to the voucher I didn't fully use?

All partly-used vouchers would have expired by the end of August 2009. Prior to that, you could have converted the outstanding balance on partially-used vouchers to findmypast.co.uk credits. You were notified in advance of how to activate your credits, if your email address was correct and up-to-date and you had chosen to receive emails.

You can still exchange any unused FamilyHistoryOnline vouchers for credit on the findmypast.co.uk site until 28 February 2010 a year after the closure of FamilyHistoryOnline. You will need to contact findmypast.co.uk to make this happen - the vouchers cannot be redeemed directly on the findmypast web site.

You should be no financial loss from the transfer of the service to findmypast.co.uk but a final date has now been set.

return to top Will support still be available?

The team that ran FamilyHistoryOnline on a day-to-day basis will continue to provide email support for anything related to the closed service for some months.

The findmypast.co.uk support team will provide email and phone support during UK office hours for the FamilyHistoryOnline data they are hosting as they provide for their present service.