1911 Census summary books on Ancestry

Ancestry have now the 1911 England and Wales Census Summary Books on their website here. 


The complete set of 1911 Census record images will launch on-line in early 2011, followed by the indexes, which will be made available in sections throughout the remainder 2011.


I see that Amazon are currently selling Family Tree Maker Platinum Edition (with 6 months access to http://www.ancestry.co.uk) for £29.99, see here for details.

Probate Calendar Books for England and Wales

Official summaries of more than six million wills dating from between 1861 and 1941 have been scanned and uploaded by Ancestry.

The "probate calendar books" for England and Wales do not give a breakdown of individual bequests, but summarise the dead person’s total estate, the date and place of death and – in some cases – the chief recipients.

To search the summaries click here:
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1904

If you wish to order a copy of a will or grant mentioned in this collection, you can do so for a fee from the Principal Probate Registry at First Avenue House or any district probate registry. You’ll need to provide the full name of the deceased, the date of the grant and the registry where it was issued.

For more information, please visit the Probate Registry’s website:
http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/cms/1226.htm.

Picasa Face Recognition

Many of us have installed Picasa (the free photo editing software from Google) on our computers, but have you tried the Face Recognition Software it uses?

The latest version uses facial recognition technology to find and group similar faces together across your entire collection of photos. By adding name tags to these groups of faces, new people albums are created.

Click here for more information.

British Newspapers - a new site

Two million pages of 19th century newspapers have now been digitalised:

http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs

Searches are free, but to see the detailed articles you need to buy either a 24-hour pass for £6.99 allowing you to view up to 100 articles, or a seven-day pass with 200 article views for £9.99.

You can view complete articles from the Penny Illustrated Paper and The Graphic free of charge.

The 1911 census

The 1911 census is online as from today:

www.1911census.co.uk

 

Most (but not all) counties are available, see:

http://blog.1911census.co.uk/2009/01/counties-available-on-the-site-at-launch

for details.

It’s not cheap:

£6.95 - 60 credits - £0.12 per credit 

£24.95 - 280 credits - £0.09 per credit 

£49.95 - 600 credits - £0.08 per credit 

Transcripts are 10 credits and original pages are 30 credits.

Eventually  the 1911 census will also appear on http://www.findmypast.com/1911census.jsp as part of a subscription package but at present you can only do it using credits.

For married women the census gives:

• Years married 
  
• Number of children born to present marriage, living and deceased
  

But you need to see the original page and not the transcript to see this.

Information on infirmity (eg deaf, dumb, blind, lunatic, imbecile etc.) will not be available to view until the census is officially opened in January 2012. 

New way to search Family Search

Have you tried the new way to search Family Search yet?

There's a pilot here:

http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch

which I found very easy to use.

1911 England and Wales Census

I've enjoyed having a look at the preview of the 1911 census for England and Wales:

http://www.1911census.co.uk.

Unfortunately they've not covered all counties yet, so I'll have to wait before I can find my Yorkshire relatives.  It's easy to search but I think it's rather expensive, at around £1 per trancript and £3 per image!

I've currently got a subscription with Ancestry, so am wondering about swopping to Find My Past when they include the 1911 census in their subscription packages.   

It's hard when comparing packages to work out who has 100% coverage for the different years and whether thay are using different trancriptions.  I think at present Find My Past have yet to complete 1851 and 1901.  I've not yet used The Genealogist, which some say has better scans of the 1841 census.  Has anyone transcribed the 1881 census other than the Family Search which I gather Ancestry use?

It will be nice when Free Cen increase their coverage....