125 million! With 124,218,791 records total in this collection! It must be new to Findmypast (FMP) and the 125 rounding the industry-standard promotion rhetoric. Who’s counting!
As we know from the British Newspaper Archive project, one of the aces FMP holds is its relationship with the British Library. That’s to the fore as they acknowledge working “in partnership with the British Library” on this project.
Here’s FMP’s description.
“These records are mostly from the 2021 electoral registers, along with the regular suppression list. It’s an excellent resource for researching current history, discovering more about the social landscape, or gathering data on your local area. These records will often give you a name, an estimated age, an address and years occupied. For many of us, these will be some of the first records we can find ourselves in.”
For living people you’re looking for, this sounds great. How good is it, you ask me? Will I find people related to me?
I’ll answer the second question first. I have relatives and friends one would think would be included and are long-term at the same address. The first listed is in the one location from 2002-14 with no information later. Another, in a nearby village, is there from 2016-22; and another in four of the years between 2002 to 2016.
I got different results for more distant relatives, ones I’m not in touch with. One was only listed twice, each for a single year at different addresses. There was no sign of a family of four male siblings, three born in Wiltshire and one in Berkshire in the 1950s and 60s. Maybe they left the country without telling me!
So what’s the answer to the first question?
Hit and miss.
Can Ancestry do any better? They have UK, Electoral Registers, 2003-2010 with 65,218,309 records. So no. The Ancestry collection is smaller and covers a more limited period.
MyHeritage has no comparable collection, nor does TheGenealogist.
Also, this week FMP makes available the US 1950 census images with partial indexing as performed by the US National Archives. FMP is not working on a complete transcription or enhanced name index.