Looking for my dead people

As any follower of this blog knows by now, "looking for my dead people" is what I call my genealogical research hobby.

It's obvious isn't it?  They're my relatives, and they're mostly dead.  (I'll admit, a fun aspect of the hobby is accidentally finding living descendants of proven ancestors -- new cousins.)

I've been spending the past while trolling through the 1911 UK Census returns trying to find various and sundry members of my family whom I know were alive at the time.  (All three of my British Home Child grandparents were still in Britain in 1911.)

After wasting several days going through the pages one by one at Ancestry.com (the pages are free to me with my subscription but they are not indexed), I decided to check out sites at which I don't have a paid membership.

Both Genes Reunited and FindMyPast offer access to the 1911 UK Census.  And both sites offer free indexed search capabilities which make it so much easier to find the references I need.  But I refuse to pay the usurious charges they want for actual access to the information.

On Thursday, when I went to the FindMyPast site to check a reference, I noticed that they were offering a 14-day free trial with full access to all their records.  (The expectation is that, once you find out how fabulous their service is, you will want to buy it.)

Bingo!  I signed on until August 25th and in two days I've already downloaded a myriad of census detail about my dead people.

Suffice to say, I've been having a blast!  Filling in holes; adding twigs to my tree; clarifying information.

I've calendared August 23rd to remind myself to cancel the membership, lest they renew automatically at their usurious prices.

But until then, I'm busy searching through the 1911 UK Census, looking for my dead people.

I'm confident that by the end of my 14 day free trial, I will have gleaned all the information I need from them, and then some!