Genealogy Chat

Last year I treated myself to the 1841 Cumberland census, but I'm so disappointed as I can hardly read it!! I haven't managed to find anyone on it either - despite knowing the right villages to check (a faint wriggle for a name etc). Any tips please, or is anyone else diappointed with a purchase - which discs are good or bad? Thanks Jacquie

Hi Jacquie, 1841 is the worst one, written in pencil. I have seen 1841 Middx and Essex, you can be lucky, but some parts are so bad no-one will ever be able to read them. It's such a shame as it's the last point of finding parents without parish records. Having said that, I am delighted with some of the writing in 1861. Quite an achievement for it's time. Best wishes Amanda

Looks like I picked the worse year to buy!! Thought Cumberland made the best pencils in the world!! Jacquie

Is any of it readable, maybe your villages are in a blackspot, so to speak. Amanda

That's a point Amanda, I'll try a few different villages to see what those pages are like. Thanks Jacquie

Hi I bought the Staffordshire 1851 - I would say that about 20% is completely illegible/unreadable. Luckily, so far I have managed to find most of my rellies that should be there but I would have been very disappointed if they had been on the illegible pages. Sa,

I would recommend buying the 1881 cds from the LDS I know you can access it on line, but you cannot play around with neighbours, first name plus p.o.b , area etc the way you can with the discs. They cost me about £30 and I have lost track of how many times I have used them to play around with possibilities. Buy it! Wendy

Hi I have got Shropshire 1841. So far, most of its legible with the odd bad page. Its just so hard and long finding anyone. Gerry

Margaret I have Lincs 1841, 1861 and 1871. 1841 has many blank(ish) pages, some areas poor other fine 1871 is generally fine 1861 is in between. The makers claim they are using better scanning techiniques nowadays so 2nd generation issues may be better.

I have bought the London 1841 to 1901 from S&N so far they are OK, there was one omission but when I emailed S&N they immediately sent out a disc with the information on it. The only problem I found was with the indexes, which i purchased separately, and although S&N gave the impression the sets had complete indexes they were in fact far from complete which makes searching that muchmore tedious Grace R

Has anyone bought Scottish 1851-1871 and are they any good? Rosalyn

On a side line to CD's I got the BIVRI from LDS this week and I am very disappointed in it Yes it is easier to search on, although you have to keep swapping discs all the time. BUT.... I have found there are less details on the CD's than there are on the IGI on the LDS site!! one example of many:- Hungerford is not on the CD's at all but there are loads of entries for Hungerford on the web site. Berkshire or Hampshire are very limited, and for the most part I have only found records that I already had from the web site, (or from Geoff who kindly did some look ups for me previously) I really would not recommend anyone buying the BIVRI. Use the www*familysearch*org free site instead and if you use the HughWallis site, http://freepages*genealogy*rootsweb*com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers/ for the counties and districts this is a much better option.

BIVRI is certainly patchy in its coverage. The main plus (compared with IGI) is that it has a lot more stuff after 1850 which (if you're lucky) can help with marriages (spouse, fathers' names, ages, dates) which you would otherwise have to buy a certificate for. A couple of years ago, FreeBMD was very patchy and you needed luck to find the right things on there.

Margaret, I have Lancashire 1871 disks and they are quite clear and am pleased with them. Andrea

I have 1841 for West Yorks from Stepping Stones. The main parish I wanted was illegible. I mentioned it to him at a family history fair and he said if I emailed him he would send me a darker scan. Quite a long time later I did let him know which particular pages it was and received a CD with a rescan of them. And YES there were my rellies!!!! Anne

Anne how long did it take for them replace your cd? i have the 1841 census from stepping stones and i can hardly read any of it i told them about this and they said they would replace it .........that was 8 months ago and im still waiting Christine

Christine,Its a funny story. I waited for ages before I emailed them (just didn't get round to it for, maybe, months). Then I heard nothing so after a few weeks I emailed them again and they said they'd do it. Heard nothing. Weeks later my son said he had a strange CD forwarded to him from his former place of work. It had nearly got chucked out as junk mail but it suddenly rang a bell with him. He had given me the original 1841 as a gift and ordered it to be sent to his workplace. It had sat there for a long time before anyone thought to ask if he wanted it!! Meanwhile I had given up hope!! Stepping Stones had sent it to the address they had on record without ever asking. I had actually thought they might be emailing the small part I was asking for. I would pester them again if I were you, but maybe just ask for the pages/folios you need? Anne

Hi Anne i emailed them about a month ago but have had no reply so i think i'll give them a ring, sounds like they forgot about me!!!!!!!!!! many thanks Christine