Newsletter – 26th December 2025
Under £100 for Findmypast Everything subscriptions! EXCLUSIVE OFFER
What makes Findmypast different – and why does it matter?
Late Christmas gift: 30-day free trial to TheGenealogist’s top Diamond subscription!
LostCousins – the next generation
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue (dated 19th December) click here; to find earlier articles use the customised Google search between this paragraph and the next (it searches ALL of the newsletters since February 2009, so you don't need to keep copies):
To go to the main LostCousins website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. If you're not already a member, do join - it's FREE, and you'll get an email to alert you whenever there's a new edition of this newsletter available!
Under £100 for Findmypast Everything subscriptions! EXCLUSIVE OFFER
Which subscription site is the best? Ultimately it all comes down to where your ancestors lived and what period you are researching. For me, with ancestors from 10 English counties (plus London, Ireland and Germany), and multiple ‘brick walls’ in the 1600s and 1700s there is no one site that meets all of my needs – and I’m willing to bet that it’s the same for most people reading this newsletter.
But with 12-month subscriptions costing around £200 a year it can be tough to find the money for more than one – so when a half-price offer comes along it’s hard to resist, especially when the offer is EXCLUSIVE to readers of this newsletter. Under this offer for NEW subscribers you pay just £99.99 at the UK site, or half-price at Findmypast’s other sites. If you are a lapsed subscriber you may also qualify, depending how long ago it was. The offer is NOT FOR EXISTING subscribers.
(You can share a link to this newsletter with friends and family – but if they’re serious about family history, why not suggest that they join LostCousins so they can get their own newsletters in future?)
Tried Findmypast before? Ten years ago Findmypast didn’t have half the records that they do now. I’m not just talking obvious things like the 1921 Census – even the 1939 Register wasn’t released until November 2015 (and it wasn’t included in subscriptions until the following year).
In 2015 Findmypast had yet to announce their ground-breaking partnership with the Roman Catholic Church, which has subsequently led to tens of millions of records going online for the first time – including the baptism of my great-great grandmother, whose birth wasn’t registered when she was born in 1840. That record was key to knocking down a ‘brick wall’ that had been blocking my way for almost two decades and, whilst DNA also played a part, both were essential to the solution. I used DNA too – an example of combining different approaches to solve a long-held problem.
There’s another reason why finding births is a lot easier than it used to be. In 2016 the GRO added a new birth index to their website, one that includes the mother’s maiden name as far as back as 1837 – the original indexes didn’t have this information until after 1911. It greatly reduces the chance of ordering the wrong birth entry, but sadly the GRO’s search is very limited in its capabilities – identifying all the children born to a particular couple can require 10 or more different searches.
Only Findmypast have added maiden names to most entries in their index of 58 million births from 1837-1911; as a Findmypast subscriber you’re no longer constrained by the unnecessarily strict limitations of the GRO’s own search.
These are just examples that I’ve chosen to emphasise how much has been added and improved. Which brings me to newspapers…..
In 2015 the British Newspaper Archive had a mere 10 million pages – now there are almost 100 million. All of these pages, with billions of names, are available through the Findmypast website and, thanks to a complete re-engineering of the search, it’s far easier to find what you’re looking for than it would have been 10 years ago.
Although this offer is exclusive to LostCousins, you won’t be supporting my work unless your purchase is tracked as coming from the LostCousins site – and that very much depends on which browser you use, what the browser settings are, and whether you have any software installed that has ‘privacy’ features. This could be an adblocking extension in your browser, your Internet security software, or a VPN. To maximise the chances of supporting LostCousins I recommend using the Chrome browser – if you haven’t used it before, the default settings are just fine.
Please ensure you use the correct link below when you make your purchase: if you start on one Findmypast site and end up on a different one the connection to LostCousins might be broken.
All Findmypast sites have the same records, and you can use whichever of their sites you prefer – even if you bought your subscription through a different site. Sadly the discount only applies for the first year.
This incredible offer can’t last for ever – the date I’ve been given is 11th January 2026 – so make your mind up now!
What makes Findmypast different – and why does it matter?
One of the biggest mistakes that any family historian can make is to assume that all of the major genealogy websites have the same records, and that the same search techniques work equally well at every site.
Even highly-experienced researchers – as most LostCousins members are – often fail to appreciate that they can get better results by adapting their search technique. For example, when you’re filling out a Search form, do you enter as much information as possible, or as little as necessary? The first technique can work well at FamilySearch and Ancestry, where it often produces lots of results (though most of them won’t be relevant) – but at Findmypast you’ll generally get much better results if you enter less information (it also saves time!).
One of the things I like most about Findmypast is the way that they handle forename variants. You don’t need to tick the ‘include name variants’ box to allow for middle names and initials: for example, a search for ‘Marie’ will find ‘Marie-Claire’, ‘Marie Ann’ and ‘Marie J’. Similarly, a search for ‘Mary’ will find ‘Mary Ann’ (though not ‘Maryann’ or ‘Marianne’). When you do tick the ‘include name variants’ box you’ll get every result that might feasibly fit, including records where only initials are shown.
I also like being able to re-order the Search results by clicking the heading at the top of any column. I find this particularly useful when I’m looking for baptisms as I can sort them by date, by location, or by the forename of the father or mother.
But it’s not just about how you fill out the Search form and sort the results – there’s also the question of what records you’re searching, and how the records are organised. Ancestry typically organise records according to their source – so if parish registers for a single county are split between two or more record offices you might have to carry out multiple searches to find the records you’re looking for (assuming you realise what has happened).
By contrast, Findmypast bring together all the records they have for a particular county, so you don’t necessarily need to know which record office holds the registers. Sometimes there might be three or four results for the same baptism, all from different sources: this might seem like unnecessary duplication, but it greatly reduces the chance that you’ll miss an entry because it has been wrongly transcribed.
Similarly you can search marriages for a county without having to worry whether they took place before or after 1754, when new registers were introduced. To carry out the same search at Ancestry is much more complicated – especially since marriages between 1754 and 1812 won’t all be in the same record set (and what works for one parish might not work for another parish in the same county).
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Findmypast have a large collection of transcribed parish records thanks to their excellent relationships with family history societies. You don’t need me to tell you that volunteers from family history societies are by far the best transcribers, thanks to their local knowledge and their diligence – this means that even if the parish register images are at Ancestry, you might find the entry you’re looking for more easily by starting at Findmypast.
Late Christmas gift: 30-day free trial to TheGenealogist’s top Diamond subscription!
You’ve a full month to explore the "brick wall" busting tools, including Map Explorer (for pinpointing exactly where ancestors lived) and their unique Keyword, Family Forename, SmartSearch and Address search features. A month to discover less well-known resources that you won’t find a other sites.
Activate your offer now using this exclusive link.
LostCousins – the next generation
As a result of unexpected health issues the time has come for Peter to hand over the reins, so you may notice a few changes. However, LostCousins WILL continue – Peter’s foresight in setting up a company 22 years ago means that neither he nor anyone else is indispensable. The LostCousins site has been carefully honed so that it runs itself – it’s working better now than ever before!
Peter would like to pass on this message to all of you:
“The success of LostCousins depends not on me but on YOU. Please don’t send emails of sympathy – it’s your entries on your My Ancestors that will provide me with sustenance during my final days. Please don’t let me down!”
This is where any major updates and corrections will be highlighted - if you think you've spotted an error first reload the newsletter (press Ctrl-F5) then check again before writing to me, in case someone else has beaten you to it......
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2025 Peter Calver
Please do NOT copy or republish any part of this newsletter without permission - which is only granted in the most exceptional circumstances. However, you MAY link to this newsletter or any article in it without asking for permission - though why not invite other family historians to join LostCousins instead, since standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE?
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