RE: [Bann Valley] Millen, Stephenson, Allen in Ballinrees

[<boydgray26@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Linde,

I think you are being a bit hard on RoostIreland.  I teach many groups of amateur family historians now and it is my chief tool along with the LDS, the two Censuses and the GV.  By using these four together, I can usually show them how to push their research back well into the 19th century within an hour of being on the pc with them and it is essential to have the occasional record from RootsIreland.

But you can tease huge amounts of information from it without paying anything.  I am not sure everyone knows this.  Barbara Braswell showed me how to do it and it works really well.  I can enter the name of a couple if I know her maiden name and hit search within a period of twenty years of their likely marriage date and I will maybe ten or twelve hits.  All I need to do is guess the names and the years and the database will tell me if I still have a hit or not.  And I have not paid a penny yet.

Now if I want to know details such as where the couple were living, or if I do not already know the mother's maiden name but do know one of her children, then yes, I need to pay, but hey, they have collected all this data and put it on the internet and I believe any labourer is worthy of her or his hire.

And they are not expensive compared to the others.  Let me elaborate.

The cost of looking at the index is 10 cents for up to ten records.  I really think one cent for a look at anything is hardly worth creating a matter of principle.

The cost of a record is €2.50, well short of the official Irish GRO one at €4 and then ONLY if you are clever enough to ignore their demand for €6 which includes a search which is not needed if you have already got the Volume and Page Number from the LDS site.  I won't even mention the GRO in Belfast and their astronomic prices.

Church records may be free at PRONI but even I cannot get to PRONI on a daily basis which is how often I use RootsIreland, never mind someone in New York who is aching to find out some info on their families.  And if I get the records locally, I always pay the clergyman £20 for the privilege of an hour or two with his books.  And even then, I might have to return the next day if I find a new connection.

Emerald also cost money to see the most important information, and more important, they are essentially a Northern Ireland affair and do very little in Donegal where I am.

I am not saying RootsIreland is perfect by any means.  They are very naughty in not giving the name of the church an event took place in unless you have searched using the church menu in the first place as I did for Joan, but they will give it to you if you email them and complain.  And of course, it goes without saying that you should never pay them to see the censuses nor the GV which are totally free online.

Have a go, Linde, and others; with a bit of practice RootsIreland is a very useful tool.  Not to use it will deprive you of a lot of useful information.

Boyd Gray

http://familytrees.genopro.com/boydgray26/Boyd/default.htm

http://www.westulstergenealogy.com/

http://preview.tinyurl.com/yk7gckr



-----Original Message-----
From: Lunney Family [mailto:family@xxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: 15 June 2012 09:27
To: BannValley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Bann Valley] Millen, Stephenson, Allen in Ballinrees

Emerald Ancestors is an alternative to RootsIreland, who now charge  
even for looking at the index, which is so ridiculous I will never  
use them again; I hope. Emerald let you see a partial index free.  
Also look at Ulster Historical Foundation
SNIP


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