My Top 10 Fee-Based Genealogy Sites

We all have genealogy sites that are our go-to places when doing any of our research. It has been a long time since I've listed mine so I figured I'd take a stab at it today. There will be two separate posts. The first, that of my top ten fee-based sites, and the second, to be published later, will be the list of my top free genealogy sites that I use often.

As with any top ten list there will be disagreements as to the order or why a site is included or missing. These are my top ten sites that I turn to regularly in my research. Your favourite site might not have made the cut due to various factors such as it was number 11 (or 12 or 13...) or I haven't had a subscription to it in the past year. A two sites that I make use of periodically that didn't make the top ten cut for me are Fold3¹ and MyHeritage³.Yes, they are useful but not vitally so over this past year.

Counting down from number ten...

10. The New York Times TimesMachine

In my research of a branch of my extended family that originally settled in New York City in the late 1800s the ability to read the death notices and even a few marriage announcements has answered a quite of few questions when trying to locate the next generation. As long as I've had the death date from a death index or registration more often than not I've been able to find a notice in The New York Times fairly quickly.

9. American Ancestors by New England Historic Genealogical Society

I don't have a current subscription but when they have had their free access periods their databases have shed light on a number of my early European settlers in the United States. Even their free databases have been useful to point me to documents I need to find and read at a later time.

8. Genealogy Quebec²

If you have ancestors that resided in Quebec then this site needs to be in your genealogy toolkit. They are constantly adding new images from various parishes in Quebec that you probably won't find any where else. They are also the home of the Drouin Collection Records. Yes, the Drouin Collection is available on other sites but Genealogy Quebec I consider the master source and all others will be behind the times when it comes to new additions. The site also has The LAFRANCE collection with early Quebec parish records starting from 1621. There is also a large obituary collection and a notarized documents collection. If that's not enough they have a collection of marriage and deaths records recorded in Quebec between 1926 and 1997 collected by the provincial health services.

7. The National Archives at Kew, England

The National Archives (TNA) in England (not to be confused with the other national archives around the world) has both free and fee based access to records. With the restrictions in place due to COVID-19 The National Archives has opened up their digital record downloads for free when normally some of these records could only be retrieved for free at their site or by paying a nominal fee. That is why they are in this list and not in my top ten free list. That said, this site is an important one for my British Isles and early Canadian research. Why Canadian? Prior to Confederation, many of the records headed back to England for government use and storage and thus ended in TNA. If you have come across WO or AO record mentions in your Loyalist research, those are collections originally held by The National Archives. Some of those collections are also held by Library and Archives Canada but it is always good to check the TNA site too.

6. General Register Office of England and Wales

We are all probably familiar with the various England and Wales birth, marriage, and death (BMD) indexes available on many genealogy sites. However, in order to make sure you have the right person you really need to order the certificate and, for England and Wales, this is the place to do it. It isn't inexpensive, £11 for a BMD certificate sent by post, but they do offer £7 for a PDF of a birth (1837-1919) or death certificate (1837-1957) sent by e-mail. One new feature is when you search the birth index on the GRO site the mother's maiden surname is now provided in the results. This can save you money or even provide a clue that helps you in your research without paying a penny.

5. GenealogyBank

This newspaper site is invaluable if you have branches of your tree that lived in the United States of America. This site has digitized newspapers that can't be found on other sites. In addition to digitized newspapers, some going back to the early 1700s, the site has a searchable copy of the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), an obituary collection from modern newspapers, some digitized books, and census records. All searchable by name, keywords, date ranges, and location (where applicable).

4. Newspapers.com¹ Publisher Extra subscription

Edging out GenealogyBank for newspaper collections is Newspapers.com with the additional Publisher Extra add-on. Much like GenealogyBank, the primary focus is on US newspapers but with the addition of the Publisher Extra add-on one has access to a number of Canadian newspapers too. The Canadian newspapers are heavy on the western side of Canada especially British Columbia but any indexed and searchable Canadian newspaper collection is a good thing in my books. Newspapers.com also has newspapers from Australia, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Panama, Scotland, and Wales in their collection. 

3. ScotlandsPeople

If you have any Scottish roots this is the one site you need to visit to locate the images of birth, marriage, and death statutory (civil) registrations, census returns, and parish registers that can't be found elsewhere online from home. Many sites will have the indexes of those records but not the images. Unlike many other fee-based genealogy sites that are subscription based ScotlandsPeople is credit based. For £7.50 you get a 30 credit voucher. The price for viewing and downloading, if you so chose to do so, is 6 credits for statutory BMD registrations, census returns, and church registers. Other records can be had for between 2 credits and 40 credits, depending on the collection.

2. Findmypast

Findmypast continues to be one of my primary research sites especially for the UK branches of my family. It isn't just because of their wonderful census, parish collections, immigration, and military collections that covers the British Isles and select parts of the world but also for their newspaper collections. With Findmypast I have access to English, Irish, and US newspapers from various other sites. There are also a number of Canadian newspapers buried in their collection.

1. Ancestry¹

There is probably no surprise that Ancestry is at the top of my list of fee-based genealogy sites. Combined with their record collections and DNA testing they have been my go-to site for many years. My primary cousin-bait tree is hosted on that site and I make use of the good...and not so good...user created trees to provide me with clues as to where to possibly look next for records in my research when I hit a stumbling block.

 

These are my top ten fee-based sites and they probably differ from yours. I'd be interested in hearing from you as to your favourites (and why) that I didn't include.

Stay tuned in the coming week or so for a list of my favourite free genealogy sites.

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Full disclosure

1. As a member of the Ancestry Canada Advisory Board this year I have been provided a free subscription to Ancestry, Newspapers.com with Publisher Extra, and Fold3. However, prior to this year I either held my own subscriptions or made use of those sites via other venues such as at my local Family History Center or a genealogy conference.

2. I was provided with a one year subscription to Genealogy Quebec last year. The subscription has since lapsed but my to-do list for that site is growing for the day when I can access those records at my local library.

3. In July this year I won a subscription to MyHeritage when I attended a Facebook presentation hosted by MyHeritage. I had a subscription in previous years but had let it lapse.

My Top 10 Other Genealogy Web Sites for 2014

I covered my personal top favourite 100% free or Canadian owned genealogy research related web site at My Top 10 Canadian Genealogy Web Sites for 2014 but there are other sites I also use on an almost daily basis when doing research. Since I deal in researching not only ancestors in Canada but also in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and the United States of America I have many sites I consult. Some are free while others need a subscription or are pay as you go.

Be warned that this is just a very, very small selection of sites I use but they are my initial "go to" places I probably couldn't live without. Often I will start with them and then move on to the more obscure or specialized web sites to find additional details. Once again, I'm certain I've omitted your favourite site that you can't live without so tell me about it in the comments.

In no particular order here are my other top 10 research sites not mentioned in My Top 10 Canadian Genealogy Web Sites for 2014 list:

Ancestry ($$$), whether it is .com, .ca, .co.uk, .com.au, etc, is my go to place due to the number of indexed records that they have available and the coverage of the areas I research. I have their world subscription and it is worth every nickel (pennies aren't made in Canada anymore). However, the one complaint I have is that their transcriptions can sometimes be just a little wacky.

• Since I do a lot of Ontario research, the Ontario, Canada Vital Records: Births, Marriages and Deaths collection is of key importance. It covers Ontario births between 1869-1913, marriages 1801-1298 (a little spotty before 1869), and deaths 1869-1938 along with deaths overseas between 1939-1947.
• The 1921 census of Canada is also hosted on Ancestry.ca and is supposed to be freely available to Canadians residing in Canada.
• For tracking those elusive US relatives the U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 is very useful for those times between the various census enumerations.

FamilySearch.org is free and is the next place I visit when doing my research. Not all of the collections are indexed but that is just fine with me. Going through the images page by page is just a digital way of scrolling through a microfilm. Even then, most of those collections have some sort of finding aid to speed up the process. If I can't find the record or index on Ancestry I'm fairly certain I will find it here. Some of my personal favourites are:

• The various collections that make of the births and marriages collections from Scotland I've mentioned in Saving Money When Searching ScotlandsPeople.
• Those researching their New Brunswick ancestors need to consult their New Brunswick, County Deed Registry Books, 1780-1930 collection. It is not indexed but I brief talk about using that collection in Expecting only Deeds and Mortgages? How About a Will?
• When I'm having a challenge locating records I always head over to the FamilySearch Research Wiki to find the answer. This part of FamilySearch has been created with the help of fellow researchers like yourself and is always being updated with new information.

If you are doing any researching of ancestors in Scotland then ScotlandsPeople.go.uk ($$$) is a must use site. It makes use of a pay as you go model where to see the results of a search you typically need to pay 1 credit and to see a record it costs 5 credits. An overview of the charges can be found here. Only here will you see the images from births, marriages, deaths, and censuses along with valuation rolls and other documents. Yes you can fly to Scotland to do the research (I highly recommend it and if you are thinking of going then talk to Christine Woodcock of Genealogy Tours of Scotland) but for the price of the airfare and hotel you can get a whole lot of records downloaded to your computer.

Findmypast ($$$) (.co.uk, ie, or .com.uk) is another site I find very useful especially for my English ancestors. But it also includes quite a number of newspaper collections that help fill in the gaps in their lives. You can either purchase a subscription or pay as you go to access images of the records. For my research I purchased the world subscription and it has been invaluable.

For finding my Australian cousins the Trove newspaper collection is the site I couldn't live without. Here you may find immigration lists, birth, marriage, and death announcements in newspapers. Even better, the site is free and you can easily make corrections to the OCR transcriptions of the articles to make them easier to find for the next researcher (always nice to give back a little).

Where would we be without Find A Grave to help us locate and then see the markers of where our relatives, distant or not, were supposedly buried? Remember that just because someone is supposedly buried in one place that they didn't die in another. As always, what is written on grave markers need to be taken with a grain of salt (or is that chunk of marble?) when it comes to their accuracy. But they do offer a starting point as to the time frame for when our ancestors were living

Speaking of death ... one of my first stops when trying to locate a death record in the United States is the Online Searchable Death Indexes & Record site. Here you will find links to sites hosting indexes, records and/or obituaries in the United States of America.

Often I will come across a book mentioned as a source in an online family tree. Since I prefer seeing the source myself and if the book is out of copyright I head on over to the Internet Archive to see if it has been digitized and placed in their collection. But I also use the Internet Archive to check out websites that may have disappeared from the Internet. Their Wayback Machine is a great tool to see those lost web sites or pages.

The National Archives ($$$ or free) located at Kew is yet another go to place when I'm doing any UK research. Many times I will come across a reference to a WO, ADM, FO, HO or AO record in an index. Since you really need to see the source record and not just rely on the index for details this means I need to search The National Archives site. Some of the collections have been digitized and placed on line there or through one of their partners. Other times you will need to pay for the digitization and have them send you the documents in question. It is still cheaper than flying over there, staying for a day, and then flying back!

Where would we be without the FreeBMD site holding transcriptions of the civil registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales? Yes, Ancestry and Findmypast both have copies of these civil registration indexes but when I can't find the entries on those sites I immediately head over to FreeBMD.