Ancestry Easter Weekend Freebie

Question

Ancestry are advertising free access to their UK, Irish and Commonweath records 19 Apr 2019  to 22 Apr 2019.

Comments

UK SITE ONLY

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Do we still have to register and open an account?

Because if so, then I am not that interested.

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Yes, you do. And if you're registered at the AUS or USA site you can't use this offer by logging into the UK site.

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dont waste your time its just click bait then will keep redirecting you to pay to see. basically its just redacted indexes and a con, i tried it. they also insert a key logger trojan spyware into your computer forever if you dont realise and read and moniter your entire computer unless you remove it, it happens the moment you agree and download anything at all and is hard to remove. im not joking. they will infest your computer with scripts. regardless of whether you want it or not. i set my laptop so they couldnt do it and they tried hard to persuade me to allow storage. then i found they worked it into a download. i managed to drag the lot into the waste bin and removed it all. its no better than cambridge analytica. any company that recommends them is just as bad and should not be trusted, you can get more for free from familysearch.org. all they are basically offering is click bait and redacted indexes. then when you attempt anything they redirect you to pay/join. in the uk you can get anything for free from 1838 from uk freecen, uk free bmd and uk free reg. 100% free nationally recognised charity backed by govt . so never pay for uk genealogy before 1838 and theres also many free parish records and archbishops transcripts. dont fill shysters pockets who sell you stuff that they get for free from these sites either because some actuall do that to unwary foreigners. the worst being you know who.

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also if your looking for any records for north west kent or the medway towns areas which all come under the bishops of rochester and includes some south london boroughs that were formally part of kent its completely free from medway local archives going back to the 1500s.

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Sorry but that is not correct. You usually cannot get access to the images of PRs  for free unless the local records office have done a deal with a free service like Familysearch/LDS. All the free stuff is generally transcripts, which tend to have a lot of inaccuracies in them. I registered for a free weekend at Ancestry.co.uk a few years ago and was never pestered and did not have my computer compromised either. I did not join as a full member for a couple of years and still enjoyed some of their free elements, like a family tree and some sources. I am now a full member and find that Ancestry have some excellent scanned images I cannot get access to anywhere else.

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we dont pay where i live ,we have our own free heritage centre and original parish registers that you can see, so you got that one wrong. we had a grant from the heritage lottery fund  of millions of pounds years ago and you can go online from home or just walk into any local library and join for free and use their computers , and also get ancestry .com for free too at the library.because neither  lds or ancestry  own us.rochester diocese kept ownership of its records and ancestry has to let us use it free in order to get our records .simple as that and you can just phone the local unitary authority or go online and ask. so thats deflated the ego a bit eh because you obviously dont know everything about where i live.  oh and we also have an lds ''mormon'' church and family history centre too in my hometown where you can also go and get free help and its within walking distance ,.and i also know what a keylogger is and i got infected after lookng  at the free ancestry weekend. luckily my anti malware and anti virus warned me immediately. whether it was intentional or accidental i got it on there. and by the way ancestry does spy on its customers and only a fool would think otherwise. data is big money these days and nobody is safe.so im lucky to live in an area where its free and no pay . a simple phone call to medway unitary authority will confirm that .

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Like Gillian, I have in the past made use of Free Weekends on Ancestry and also on Findmypast. I now have a subscription and find it invaluable for my research. I haven't had any problems with malware of any sort.

Like you,I use my local archives. Using local archives is great but not much use for research on individuals from the other side of the country. It is also true that many Archives and public libraries have a subscription to the Library edition of Ancestry and sometimes Findmypast. Again this is great, although there are many records not in these versions and for many people not convenient (may even cost more in transport and parking that a subscription)

Unfortunately, all local archives have limited funding (not a high priority in the eyes of many ratepayers)  In some areas this has led to very restricted opening hours and even the proposal to charge (Northamptonshire, although the outcry led to at least a temporary withdrawal of the proposal) Unsurprisingly many of the archives have looked for other forms of funding. Many have received some heritage lottery funds but these are usually quite specific rather than general funding. 

 Many archives have also joined up with one of the large commercial sites to digitise and make available on those platforms various sets of records. The agreement usually seems to allow exclusive online access to these records on the 'partnership' platform for a period of time. Medway is no different. It formed a partnership with Ancestry in 2016 to digitise and index workhouse records from three poor law unions, and since then Methodist registers from the area. I see that there are also some Medway  National school records on Findmypast . A large number of Kent parish registers are also on Findmypast.

references:

Allson Cable, "MALSC's first project with Ancestry" The Clock Tower (Friends of Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre)  Nov 2016 p8  

http://foma-lsc.org/Downloads/Issue%2044.pdf

http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/findmypast-announces-deal-digitise-kent-parish-registers

National Schools Admission Registers, list of participating archives

https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-Records/national-school-admission-registers-and-log-books-1870-1914

Answer 1

It does of course mean that for UK subscribers the site will slow down considerably, as all and sundry take advantage of the freebie. But at least the Commonwealth records will be available, which they aren't usually for those with a UK sub.