My World Cup Plans

So I went on FindMyPast.com at one o'clock this morning (whenever there is a free promotion going on like this, I prefer to do my searching in the middle of the night when there is less traffic and less chance of a server fail).  In case you don't know about their promotion right now, click here.  Suffice to say, I was excited... darn excited.  So excited that I actually went and looked up England's World Cup Schedule and marked my calendar accordingly.

Since I only had ninety minutes of all access, I made a list of all the people I wanted to look up and then checked the site's databases to see if they'd have anything for those people (mostly brick walls of mine).   I actually ended up being so well prepared that I had found everything on my list within the first half hour.  But that ended up being nice because it gave me a lot of free time to explore the whole website (which led me to things I hadn't expected to find).  Of course, the 1911 census is the big draw and one of the main things I wanted to check.  But I was surprised at how thorough the parish records were - much more so than FamilySearch's pilot site.  In fact, the majority of my finds were in those parish records. 

Here is a breakdown of what I've found:

• Burial dates and places for 6 ancestors (and another two probable ancestors).
• Marriage dates and places for six ancestors (three couples).
• Baptism dates and places for two ancestors
• The maiden name of my 4th great-grandmother (its Moulds by the way).

Other things I learned:

• I really need to visit Churchill, Somerset, England.  I have quite a few ancestors buried in the cemetery of the Church of St. John the Baptist.
• My great-grandmother's 1st cousin and probable namesake was a professional singer in the Battersea district of London in the 1910s (and possibly later). 
• Oddly enough, I also need to visit Alkborough in Lincolnshire because I have many ancestors buried in their Church of St. John the Baptist cemetery.
• When my great-great-grandparents came to the USA in 1892, their port of departure was Liverpool and their port of arrival was Philadelphia (destination Michigan).
• When my great-great-grandfather's brother came to the USA 14 years later, his port of arrival when leaving Liverpool is New York, yet his ship is known to have arrived in Boston.

Overall, I'm very happy with everything I found.  I don't have much more to look up but I'll still try and visit the site whenever I know England is playing.  This really is a wonderful deal and if you have any fairly recent British born ancestors (though some of their holdings do date back to the 1700s), I highly recommend checking out FindMyPast.com (especially whenever England is playing in the World Cup).

NOTE: I was in no way prompted or contacted to write this post nor did I receive payment of any kind for writing this post.  I am a registered user of FindMyPast.com but do not subscribe.