Heritage Day

In Canada Heritage Day
is celebrated the 3rd Monday of February. Like the name suggests, this day is all about Canada 's national heritage. It is a time for Canadians across the country to explore and celebrate their own personal heritage. Ancestry.ca is offering 3 days free access to their site to help promote Heritage Day (beginning Feb 15 - 28).

Scotlands OPR images

I am very excited! WOW! Okay, Okay, calm down...

Well Scotlandspeople.gov.uk have announced the posting of original parish records(OPR) images. So, if you have an account already and have performed previous OPR searches only to find the images are not available, well the wait is over. You can now view the images, but it will cost you an additional five credits. Just check your "previous searches" to find any marked OPR and you will then find that you can view the image.

Very exciting!!!

Coronation Stone

Some say it is just a stone, but if you are visiting Edinburgh Castle do not say it out loud.
The coronation stone of Scottish Kings and Queens was stolen by English King Edward I 700 years ago and has since been returned to Scotland. However there is a much deeper history to the Stone as accounted by some researchers. Visit Ancestry.co.ukto find out more.

Roslyn

Dan Brown's book "the davinci code" has many people curious about the genealogy of the world. Causing many to jump on planes, sign up for tours to visit many of the places described in his book. If you have read the book or seen the movie you may want to have a look at this:
Genealogie [sic] of the Sainteclaires of Rosslyn

Free to Nov 30 2006

Ancestry.com is providing free access until Nov 30 to the immigration records.Find them here ->
Immigration Ancestors to USA.

1851 Census

Well ancestry.com is providing free access to the 1851 Census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia until Nov 15.

1841 Census

Scotlandspeople.gov.uk have done it again. They have recently added the 1841 census to their site. Looks like they are living up to their commitmetn to digitize all Birth, Marriage and Death Registers. Now if they can only get those OPR records digitized, beyond the index.

Ulster Ireland

If you have found information that has lead you to Ulster Ireland, well you will probably want to have a search completed at PRONI. You can have a preliminary search completed by
Ulster Ancestry. They can also be commisioned to do a complete search for you.

FamilySearch.org

The best site on the web for free searches has to be FamilySearch.org. This website is provided by The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints. It is the largest collection of family history data available in the world. They have been gathering genealogical information for over 100 years. The original microfilm of records is stored at Granite Mountain Records Vault in Utah. This is to safehouse the data, in the event something where to happen to the data at the library it could be reproduced from the vault. Happy searching!

Scotlands 1861 Census

Scotlandspeople.gov.uk has just announced that the 1861 Census is now available online. George Lyon, deputy minister for Finance and Public Service Reform announced its availability, as Scotland follows through with its commitment to digitize all Birth, Marriage and Death Registers as well as all Victorian Cenus information.

Free Birth Marriage Death Certificates

If you are searching for ancestors in Britain, a great place to look for infromation is the FreeBMD and FreeCEN. They have a number of volunteers transcribing information into there database. It sure has helped me save some money.