Accuracy

To enable us to search for ancestors in the censuses online, we rely on the fact that teams of transcribers have painstakingly read, and keyed into a computer, every single one of the millions of entries.

Errors do occur during the process, but TG has an enviable reputation with genealogists for the high quality of its transcriptions.

TG allows you to view an image of the original page so you can confirm the transcribed information before printing or storing it on your computer for future reference.

Full Transcription

Before you can enjoy reading your ancestor's census entry, you have to find it. That can sometimes be easier said than done. If the surname is unusual and your ancestors live in a small town or village, the search can be brief, but a John Smith resident in London can take many hours of your like. The more you know about a person, such as age, occupation, address, where born and so forth, the easier the search should become. However, if each entry is not fully transcribed, the criteria you can use is more limited. On TG much of the data has been transcribed, with a 'field' for each piece of information. There is a button to the right of each entry to correct any errors or report a poor quality image.

Keyword Master Search

Apart from street names , the full census transcription also extemds our search capabilities by including people's occupations. That elusive John Smith may be hard to track down with just his name and age, but enabling us to specify that he is a carpenter is going to shorten the list of possible matches considerably.

The Keyword Master Search is a handy way to dive in with a quick query. It acts rather like an internet search engine, so for example 'john smith carpenter london' plus the selection of a particular census year such as 1901, narrows the search and yields 65 matches. You can also limit the census search to an individual county. The Keyword Master Search also allows you to search for names in the BMD (1984-2005) indexes, parish records, and other data sets.

Family Forename Search

One way to identify a family in the census is by the combination of forenames for the parents and their children and their corresponding birth years. As many families had a large number of children the odds of another family in the same county being an exact match is quite remote, which TG uses to its advantage with its Family Forename Search.

I tried this by entering five common forenames with no dates for a family I knew existed in the 1871 Census, clicked on Search, and within 10 seconds it had found the 323 families in the whole census with that combination of names. When I specified the county to search, it quickly narrowed it down to two families. This is a useful feature that you can further refine by entering a birth year for one or more of the forenames, or by adding the family surnames.

Single Database Searches

TG has a large number of databases which can be searched individually; scroll down the Research View to find the list which gives you direct access to these. TG has death records for both world wars and there is an ongoing project to document overseas BMD records for members of the British armed forces. The TG website is also adding transcripts or page images of parish records, marriage registers, Nonconformist records, trade directories, school records, will indexes and other publications for various counties and eras, many of which cover periods before the census and civil registration and some are not available elsewhere.

Each category listed offers a choice of records within that category and then opens a window with the applicable search fields for your chosen document. The census window offers a basic search on name and age, with the option for phonetic variations and nicknames - a rather clever system that identifies variants of forenames, such as Betty, Betsy, Beth and Liz as being Elizabeth. Switch to Advanced Search and you have all these options plus the ability to specify data for all the fields in the census form, including street address and occupation.

Types of Subscription

All hobbies cost money, and researching your family tree is no exception. There are different plans available at TG that attempt to match different user's needs - from the person who is researching a whole tree to the one returning to confirm a few facts. If you don't want any usage limitations, the Personal Premium subscription at £68.95 for a year, or £39.95 for six months, offers you unlimited credit usage.

An alternative is the Personal Plus option, which buys credits that are used each time you view a document. This plan ranges from £14.95 per quarter to £55.95 per year, with unused credits carried over to the following period. For the occasional user who just wants to see a few records the Personal Pay-as-you-go buys a number of credits, from £5.

If you are tempted by the idea of credits, in whichever plan, it's worth checking the credits page on the website as many views cost more than a single credit and may not go as far as you expect.