* 1939 Register on Find My Past

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David_Lewis
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1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by David_Lewis »

Has anyone accessed the 1939 register on find my past yet? Is it worth The £6.95 per household?
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RSellens
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by RSellens »

I had some credits due to expire, and used them to view my Great-Grandfather and have to say i was very disappointed. He was in hospital, so it only listed his name, Dob (which was wrong) and his occupation. I don't have enough credits to try a proper household so i don't know if they caontian anything else.

Richard
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LornaCraig
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by LornaCraig »

I haven't accessed it yet because I'm thinking about how many households I might want. The more you want, the cheaper it works out per household:

FMP say:
Records are £6.95 per household, £24.95 for 5 households (£4.99 each) or £54.95 (£3.66 each) in our best value 15 household package
If you already have a FMP subscription you should have received an email with a code for a 25% discount on the 5 household bundle making them £3.74 each.

The records do include (alleged) dates of birth, so it's cheaper than ordering birth certificates. Like a census, it shows which individuals were living together as a family unit and what their occupations were, and the image will show who was living nearby. I think there are also maps of the corresponding area at the time.

However, it's worth bearing in mind that records of individuals born less than 100 years ago and who are not 'known to be deceased' will be blocked.

If anyone hasn't seen it and is interested, this is the link to the introductory video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8JRmjA00h4
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by jimlad68 »

A good point on the "Is it worth The £6.95 per household?" - My wife has had a look at the indexes and it is the same old problem with pay per view, it could be one of many records and you need to look at say 5 to be fairly sure you have the right one, so that could be £30+ and if you have a common name much more. And what about "speculative" searches when people may have moved around. Not for us yet, as with the 1911 census, just wait and hope it becomes part of a subscription on various sites.

Just as I was starting to sing the praises of FMP (apart from the search engine that is!), Findmypast have done it again, just like they did with the 1911 census, created a monopoly and charging an exorbitant fee, not even a subscription option.

I enquired of FMP re including it in the subscription, no, as they claim the expense etc of the operation, but how can it be any more expensive than the census (just think of the size of the USA census) that many sites offer as part of a subscription.

And to top it all I quote their email to me "There are no plans to include this Register as part of any subscription" I just hope that in time, as with the 1911 census, it will be part of a subscription on many sites.

But then again, can we blame FMP, surely it was all part of the contract with the government department! It would be interesting to see the conditions/ longevity/ copyright etc.

Public records/ Private monopoly. I don't mind paying for things, but I don't like being fleeced.

Apologies, rant over!
Jim Orrell - researching: see - but probably out of date https://gw.geneanet.org/jimlad68
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ireneblackburn
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by ireneblackburn »

As I have a FMP subscription I got 25% off a 5 household bundle. You get a transcription for the household first of all then when you look at the image you see everyone on the page. In two cases so far I have found other family members living in separate households on the same page.

There are no relationships or place of birth, but there is a date of birth - which should be correct since it was used for ration cards and subsequently National Insurance. The most interesting thing is that in the case of women who married after 1939 and before they stopped updating it in the 1990s the new married surname has been added. Also if names are shown for people who would be less than 100 years old, you know they died before 1990 (I can't remember the exact date , but you can look it up).

When you do a free search for a name and get the results, it gives you the name of the household (head of household surname), year of birth and the town or district they were living in, it also gives you the reference number, make a note of it and compare it with someone else you expect to find in the household, only the last digit should be different. You can also search for a name and include another family member in the search.
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ireneblackburn
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by ireneblackburn »

I forgot to mentio that I have created a new template on Ancestral Sources and am happy with the way it works.

For those of you complaining about the price, I am sure that once they have recouped enough of their investment t will be added to the general subscription, but then I expect the subscription fees will increase to cover the cost.
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by davidm_uk »

ireneblackburn wrote:There are no relationships or place of birth, but there is a date of birth - which should be correct since it was used for ration cards and subsequently National Insurance.
Well I looked up my parents and my mum's date of birth was wrong, birth certificate says 21 January 1911, 1939 Register says 22 Jan 1912. I've not got her NI card so no idea what that says (both parents been dead for some years now, so no one to ask about it).
David Miller - researching Miller, Hare, Walker, Bright (mostly Herts, Beds, Dorset and London)
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by jsphillips »

I have done a search
I have found my mother and my aunt at an address I know. So they are the unlocked ones.
It listed 4 individuals with 2 locked.
I would be one of the locked as still living
I cannot see who the other locked individual was ?
How do I find the name to unlock ??I have clicked link and no name appears as locked ?
There were no other children born at this time
Both my father and my uncle were in the Army. It could be that one of them was the other unlocked.
Can they be unlocked if deceased ?? This is unclear of military personnel.
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by tatewise »

Irene, could you please attach your AS Template to this thread, so it can be added to the Knowledge Base for the benefit of others.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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ireneblackburn
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by ireneblackburn »

Hi Mike

I don't know where to find the template, but here is a screenshot.

Later Married Name just records names that were added after 1939
Occupation comments is for 'Heavy Work' or 'Light Work' which has been written in red, and added to the occupation field.
Comments is for anything that appears on the right side, eg in one case I have found the name of a ship, seaman's ticket number and job description written in red so he must have been recalled to the Merchant Marine service. In other cases I have copied the comments but as yet I don't know what they mean.

Irene
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tatewise
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by tatewise »

Hi Irene.
In your screenshot, at the bottom is an Export... button, so use that to create a template file and attach that here.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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ireneblackburn
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by ireneblackburn »

Oh dear, I feel really stupid now!

It is attached
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UK1939.xml
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by tatewise »

Thank you Irene, I've added the template to the downloads, but it will need a KB update before it appears in the Download AS Templates index:
fhugdownloads:contents:ancestral_sources_template_census_uk_1939_register|> Ancestral Sources Template ~ Census UK 1939 Register

See related thread 1939 Register (12986) for a narrative Sentence Template adjustment to the Census Event.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by jmurphy »

Some thoughts on the 1939 Register so far --

I have received three discount codes so far -- one at 25% from Find My Past since I am a subscriber, and two at 10% for signing up to get news about the Register, and as a subscriber to the Lost Cousins newsletter. If you are looking for a way to reduce the cost of doing anything, it pays to swing by the Lost Cousins site and read Peter's newsletters.

That being said, I think it was Chris Paton of the British GENES blog who spotted that if you log in to FindMyPast on the US site and buy credits there, the current exchange rate makes the price a bit cheaper. Chris also has some nice reviews with his experiences so far, and a writeup of what bloggers learned from a Q-and-A session that was offered to them.

Via Chris's blog I also learned a great tip sent to him by John D Reid of the blog Anglo-Celtic Connections. Suppose you have found a candidate for one of your family in the search results, but you aren't sure that it is the right person. Copy the archive reference from the preview, which will be in the form RG101/0631E/002/1. Go to advanced search and type in 0621E in the Piece field and 002 in the item field. For your search results, you'll get all of the open records for that register page.

If your people have lived in the same place since the 1911 census, or if you have found them on the electoral rolls, you may be able to confirm this is the right entry because you'll see their neighbors on the same page or on nearby pages. Of course this trick will not help you if your people are in an unexpected place, unless they happened to be with a relative whose name you'll recognize. But for people doing one-place and one-name studies, this allows you to get a feel for who is nearby and to see how many entries are redacted without having to unlock a household to get the image.

I am currently going over my online tree and making a list of who might be alive and in England in 1939.
I'm using the National Probate Calendar and electoral rolls to narrow the possibilities. I'm using a spreadsheet for the moment -- I'm sure this would be easier to do in Family Historian with a query, but my data entry in FH is sadly out of date. :|

After I exclude all the people who I know to be in the USA, and those known to have died before September 1939, I'll see who is left over. I'll make a fresh log to record possible search hits and rank them by priority, so I can see how many households I want to buy credits for.

I agree that if you have a lot of households to look for, the cost adds up pretty quickly -- but on the other hand, before this release, to request the information from the Register cost 42 GBP. So like any other record, one has to weigh the cost of getting it against the information you're likely to get. I may decide that it's not worth it, because I have certificates and wills that are higher priority -- but that won't stop me from gleaning whatever information I can from the search results, and making a log of entries I want to see, which I might be able to use several years' down the road, if the Register is rolled into FMP's regular sub the way the 1911 Census eventually was.

Mostly I am disappointed in two things -- one, that FMP didn't say at the outset that this would be similar to the 1911 Census release, where it would be a separate expense, and two, that they have gone to a great deal of trouble adding maps and photos and other ephemera.

Part of the fun of doing this hobby is chasing down newspaper articles and maps and photos myself, so the net effect of FMP doing it is like having your relatives surprise you, not with a Christmas gift of a gift certificate to your favorite fabric store, but with a completed garment that someone else has made up in a style that isn't to your taste -- and since they had to pay someone else to make the bespoke garment, the quality of fabric chosen was not at all what you would have used, had you been able to go to the shop yourself.
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by jmurphy »

ireneblackburn wrote:I forgot to mentio that I have created a new template on Ancestral Sources and am happy with the way it works.
Thanks very much for sharing this, Irene, and thanks to Mike for his efforts, too.

I don't know how soon I'll be needing the template for AS, because the people I'm most interested in finding were either in the USA or died before 1939, but it's brilliant to see that the community has responded so quickly.

Before the release we had a question on G&FH.SE about what corrections were made on the Register. I've updated that to reflect the discoveries people have written about, and my answer has links to several of the blogs and sites with information about the Register. http://genealogy.stackexchange.com/a/9878
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rodit
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by rodit »

My thanks, too.

It works well, especially with the Text alteration.

One thing that hasn't happened - I subscribe to FMP but did not receive ANY notice of discounts!

Am waiting to see their response to my Email.

regards

Roger
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AnneEast
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by AnneEast »

I am a FMP subscriber and didn't get a discount email either! Will await the answer to your query with interest. However I don't have anything in my research pressing enough to spend money on. I prefer to spend it on more certificates and wills. Hoping that some day the 1939 will be available under the normal FMP subs in the same way 1911 was.
Anne
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by ireneblackburn »

I have just received another 25% offer, it came with the FMP Fridays newsletter, so perhaps you need to subscribe to that to get the discount.
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ireneblackburn
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by ireneblackburn »

It looks as if FMP have removed the reference Piece Number from the results. There must have been too many people using this method to see the names on a page
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FMP 1939 no ref.JPG
FMP 1939 no ref.JPG (28.99 KiB) Viewed 21598 times
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TimTreeby
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by TimTreeby »

At the moment it now depends on which browser you use as to what shows.

Using IE11 on Win7
1939-IE.PNG
1939-IE.PNG (15.14 KiB) Viewed 21541 times
Using Firefox 40.0.3 on Win7
1939-Firefox.PNG
1939-Firefox.PNG (11.66 KiB) Viewed 21541 times
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Wilfreda99
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by Wilfreda99 »

Were people registered at their home (electoral roll) address, or at the address they were at on 29th September? I am trying to find my grandfather, there seems to be only one candidate, assuming the birth year is reasonably correct, but he is not where I think he would have been living. However he was an opera singer and went round the country appearing at shows so this could have been his digs for the week. I am going to try and find a newspaper article for the area and date to confirm it, but just wondered if anyone knows - it is not in the Find My Past collection.
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by tatewise »

As far as I can tell, everyone was registered at the address they were staying at on 29th September 1939 just like a Census.
The 1939 Register was initially based on the planned 1941 Census and followed very similar methods.
There is some interesting background at:
http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blo ... us-census/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ ... n_Act_1939
http://www.1911census.org.uk/1939.htm
Regarding the Identity Cards, this last reference says:
On the right hand page of the cards was a space for the cardholder's full postal address and signature but when originally issued in 1939, there were strict instructions that this should be left blank for now.
....
Later in late May 1940, presumably as the danger of an invasion increased, instructions were issued that everyone over 16 must now sign and date the card and write their address on the right hand page of the card and also that the card must be carried at all times.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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LornaCraig
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by LornaCraig »

The design of the ID card changed a few times, as security was tightened.

I have the National Registration Identity Cards for my father and my maternal grandfather. Both are signed by the owners but there is no space for the signatory to date the card. My father’s card folds in two and the spaces for address fill the whole of the inside, rather than being just on the right hand page. Changes of full postal address had to be notified to the National Registration officer, who recorded the entry in successive sections and date-stamped the entry. My father’s card was re-issued in 1950 (presumably because the first card had been filled up). Cards had to be carried until 21 February 1952.

My grandfather’s card was issued in 1943 and is has an extra panel, folding in three. The third panel is a certificate of official capacity (he was a Chief Warden in Civil Defence) and includes his date of birth, height, eye and hair colour, and a photo certified by someone who knew him. This type of card was only required by those with an ‘official capacity’.
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by tatewise »

Yes, my last reference goes on to say:
Initially, adult identity cards were buff, the same colour as children's cards, but in 1943 when registration and rationing were combined, a blue card was introduced and issued to all adults, replacing their previous cards.
There was also a green card with photo id for 'officials'.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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Re: 1939 Register on Find My Past

Post by STSGenuki »

ireneblackburn wrote:It looks as if FMP have removed the reference Piece Number from the results. There must have been too many people using this method to see the names on a page
Irene,
You can still see the ref numbers if you hover over the Preview button on the search results page, at least in Firefox

Mike
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