We've had a few people get in touch recently asking why some of the adverts they see on our websites don't seem very relevant, and in some cases feel a bit... low quality.

The answer usually comes down to one simple choice: whether or not you accept personalised advertising via cookies.

What's the difference?

When you visit our sites, you're asked whether you're happy to accept cookies. One of the ways we use them is to allow our partners to determine which adverts you may see: in other words, whether or not you’ll receive personalised adverts. If you accept cookies, the ads you’ll see will be personalised ads, since you’ll enable advertisers to show you content based on your interests (for example, genealogy services, books, or things you've searched for elsewhere).

If you decline cookies, you’ll still see ads, but advertisers are no longer able to tailor what you see.

That second option is absolutely fine, and entirely your choice. However, it does have an unintended side effect.

Why do the ads look worse?

Advertisers try to show their ads to people who are likely to be interested. If personalisation is switched on, they can target those audiences more precisely.

If personalisation is switched off, that targeting isn't possible. As a result advertisers will show ads “blindly”, i.e. the ads that appear are often more generic, or sometimes the kind of "clickbait" content many people dislike.

So it's not that we are choosing to show poorer adverts. It's due to how the advertising ecosystem works behind the scenes.

An example of a low-quality advertisement

Why do we show ads at all?

FreeBMD, FreeCEN, FreeREG, and (soon) FreePRO are free to use and always will be. However, keeping it free for you has a cost

Advertising is our main source of income and helps us to:

• keep the websites running
• maintain and improve the data
• support our volunteers and infrastructure

Without it, we wouldn't be able to provide access to over 500 million records for free.

At the same time, we know that advertising can affect how the site feels to use. We are committed to finding the right balance between generating the income we need and providing a good experience for our users. We are actively testing and finding ways to improve how adverts are displayed, with the aim of making them less intrusive while keeping our services sustainable.

An example of a better quality advertisement

What can you do?

You are always in control of your preferences. If you are seeing adverts that feel irrelevant or poor quality, you may wish to review your cookie settings and consider allowing personalised ads. Many users find this results in more relevant and less intrusive advertising.
If you prefer not to, that's completely fine too. We respect that choice, and we'll continue working to improve the experience as much as we can within those constraints.

We’d love your feedback

We are actively exploring ways to improve both the user experience and how advertising appears on the site. If you have thoughts, please do get in touch via the Contact form.

Time commitment: Approx. 4–6 hours per week (flexible)

Location: Home-based, with online meetings as required

FreeREG is the part of Free UK Genealogy dedicated to transcribing and publishing parish register data. It is run by volunteers for the benefit of family historians everywhere.

Like all Free UK Genealogy projects, FreeREG is also volunteer-led: managed by a team of volunteers (the “Exec”).

We are now looking for a committed volunteer from within the FreeREG community to step into the role of Executive Lead. This is the most senior volunteer leadership role in the project, responsible for guiding the work of other Exec volunteers and coordinators, supporting the community of transcribers, and ensuring FreeREG continues to flourish.

We don’t expect you to be an expert in everything - what matters most is your experience of FreeREG, an understanding of what the project does and how it works, and a willingness to support, encourage and coordinate others.

The Role

As Executive Lead, you will:

• Represent FreeREG in cross-project matters such as FreeComETT
• Attend technical development meetings (currently every two weeks) in a non-technical capacity and FreeREG steering committee (FRSC) meetings (monthly)
• Handle non-technical queries that are not county-specific (or pass to the relevant person/group)
• Approve and create new Syndicates (and delete, where necessary)
• Manage and support County and Syndicate Coordinators:
• FreeREG website housekeeping
• Compile and distribute a quarterly newsletter to all FreeREG volunteers working closely with the Coordinator Liaison Lead and Free UK Genealogy COO
• Uphold the FreeUKGEN volunteer Code of Conduct and manage issues in line with Free UK Genealogy processes.
• Lead on aligning FreeREG with the Free UK Genealogy strategy, working closely with the chair of the FreeREG steering committee and the COO towards the FreeREG targets

Anna Wilson is a Free UK Genealogy volunteer and PHAROS student.

Here, she shares with us an example of how FreeREG helped her track down the baptism record of her four-times great grandfather, William Dunbar.

I have been researching my family history since 2004 after discovering three Victorian photograph albums in a dark corner of my parent's attic. It's a large attic and was full of ‘stuff’ so these albums had been left untouched for years. My father stated that he had never seen them before even though the house had been his family home since the 1960s. 

The photograph albums led to the discovery that my paternal great-grandparents were Scottish and offered me the opportunity to delve into the amazing records available at ScotlandsPeople.

This was until I came across the name of my four times great grandfather William Dunbar. I easily found trees online which included William and a baptism record for him on the 14th April 1754 in Whittinghame, East Lothian. The actual baptism record detailed the name of his father Alexander Dunbar and his mother Helen Pringle, and I happily continued to work on my tree entering in the details of his marriage and children. 

I tend to bulk the wish list of records I want to purchase with credit at ScotlandsPeople as it keeps me on a focused path rather than straying into looking at ‘potential’ records and using up all my credit. So it was months later that I obtained a copy of Peter Taylor’s will, my three times great grandfather, who had been married to Ratchel Dunbar, William’s daughter.

Peter Taylor, family photograph

Peter Taylor’s will was a gem of a genealogical document for both the Taylor and Dunbar families. It referred to land that Ratchel had inherited from her father, which had belonged to William Dunbar’s mother… Ratchel Galloway. This was an unfamiliar name: where was Helen Pringle? I revisited the records I had about William. His marriage to Catherine Patterson was in 1785 in Haddington, East Lothian. Their marriage occurred before the introduction of Civil Registration in Scotland in 1855 and so I was reliant on the Old Parish Registers of marriage. The entry stated that they had been irregularly married in Edinburgh – perhaps more information would be in the Kirk Session Records but residing in Somerset a visit to the National Records of Scotland (NRS) would not be happening any time soon.

So, I searched ScotlandsPeople again changing dates, names, and locations with the same three results but none relating to William Dunbar the son of Alexander Dunbar and Ratchel Galloway. 

By 2018 I had been trying to search for William Dunbar’s correct baptism for 2 years. I discovered that FreeREG had great coverage of baptisms, marriages and burials for the East Lothian area. I decided to use their search engine, making sure I used the Soundex facility. In less than a minute, bingo: there he was William Dumbar, baptised in the September of 1759 in Haddington, East Lothian just below the other William Dunbar baptised 1754 in Whittinghame, East Lothian. Clicking on the entry his father was Alexander Dunbar and his mother was transcribed as Rahall Gallaway, with William Gallaway as a witness.

Baptism record of William Dumbar on FreeREG

So why could I not find the original image on ScotlandsPeople? 

I went back to ScotlandsPeople and searched using ‘Rahall Galloway’ as William’s parent and used phonetic and wildcard searches to match the transcription of the baptism entry and there it was in the search results. It recorded William Dumbar’s parents as Alexander Dumbar and Rachall Galloway and I was able to purchase the correct baptism for my William Dunbar – leading to a different family to that of Alexander Dunbar and Helen Pringle. 

So, some valuable lessons learnt along the way:

• Always verify the information and sources from online trees, 
• Never give up on brick walls,
• Find as many records relating to an ancestor as possible,
• Use as many search facilities as possible to find them,
• Always use phonetic and wildcard searches on different websites
• If FreeREG covers your area of interest in Scotland it is a great resource to identify names that have been mistranscribed as well as assist in narrowing down the relevant individual before you spend your credit at ScotlandsPeople.

I wish I had found FreeREG sooner!

An intriguing entry occasionally catches the eye of our transcribers - and raises all kinds of unanswered questions.

One such entry was recently unearthed by Ian Slater, a volunteer transcriber for FreeREG, when working his way through the burial register for Broadway Cemetery in Peterborough.

Ian writes:

When transcribing records, it is unusual to find one with an unconfirmed name; an age ‘range’; and an unknown address. So, when I found the following entry, it literally stopped me in my tracks:

Why was his name “supposed to be”? And why was his age in doubt, and his address unknown?

Today, some 130 years later, we have the benefit of access to digitised records on the internet and, naturally, my first thought was to search for the name online.

My search revealed a sorry and puzzling tale – reported in several newspapers* nationwide during August and September of 1885.

Found Shot

The reports revealed that Count Hipólito Finat was a Spanish nobleman, born in Madrid in 1838, and married to Leonor de Carvajal in 1870. He was a member of the Spanish Cortes, Deputy for the Province of Seville - and, sadly, he had shot himself in the head in King Street, Peterborough on the morning of Wednesday 12th August 1885.

The first problem was identification – and, as the record shows, at the point of burial (five days after his death) they were not even sure they had got his name correct!

The newspapers reported that Finat was found with nothing in his pockets that would lead to his identification. But from the quality of his clothes (made by outfitters in Paris) and, from his appearance, it was thought that this was “a gentleman from Spain or France”.

So, the City Mayor contacted the Spanish and French Consuls in London. And, having found that the waistband of Finat’s trousers had the maker’s name of Robert Cumberland with an address in Paris (together with the name Finat and Madrid), the Mayor also contacted M Cumberland. In the telegram reply, it was confirmed that Hipolito Finat was a well-known gentleman from Madrid.

The newspapers reported that he had, in fact, left Paris on 10th August, with 600 French Francs (about £24) and a gold watch and chain in his possession, although this was missing when his body was found.

For some time, it seems Finat had been under the care of a Dr Barbet, Rue Boileau, Paris, and in a telegram received by the Mayor of Peterborough from Finat's bankers in Paris, it is stated that he was "temporarily mad". It was also reported that Finat had expressed an intention to commit suicide as he had thought that he would lose his fortune.

At the inquest on 24th August 1885, an open verdict of Found Shot was returned.

Image from the National Library of Wales

Exhumation

With the identity confirmed and some context gathered, attention now focused on repatriation.
On 19th August, the Consul-General of Spain based in London contacted the Mayor by telegram asking that the body be preserved. However, of course, the burial had taken place in the Broadway Cemetery two days earlier by the city Poor-Law Officials (after a photograph had been taken).

Subsequently, on 10th September 1885, the Peterborough Mayor received an order from the Home Secretary for the exhumation of the body of Count Finat. This took place on 14th September at 4am in the presence of a group that included the Mayor, a Catholic priest, a doctor and the head-constable. 

Four days later, the body was sent to London (after being encased in a lead shell and an oak coffin with silver mountings), where it was shipped on board the SS Lope de Vega, and forwarded to Madrid, accompanied by the priest.

Why Peterborough?

The question remains: Why did an important Spanish Count depart Paris and travel to Peterborough in England to commit suicide?
While searching on the Count’s name in the newspaper archives, Finat’s name was found listed as a director on a 'prospectus' for the Union Bank of Spain and England Limited in 1881. This gives him a reason for having been in England – but the bank was headquartered in London, so why Peterborough? Maybe a branch was being considered there. Further searches show the bank went into voluntary liquidation around 1895, so it’s possible that Finat had good cause to fear he might lose his fortune.

A noble link

Peterborough does have one other link with Spanish nobility: some 350 years earlier, Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, was buried in Peterborough Cathedral (1536). So, Finat was not the first important Spaniard to be buried locally – although he was probably the only one to have been exhumed and taken back to the country of his birth!
 
At Free UK Genealogy, we naturally champion using free resources for our research. Although most newspaper archives are behind 'paid' walls these days, it is possible to search some newspaper archives for free and extract information. A search on ‘Count Finat’ in the newspaper archives (see sources below) brings up several pages of headlines and extracts, from which it has been possible to ascertain several facts about the incident, as Ian has related in this article. The Welsh Newspapers online site is, however, completely free!

Sources

Results for 'count finat' | Between 1st Jan 1850 and 31st Dec 1899 | British Newspaper Archive

Welsh Newspapers Online - Search - '()' (library.wales)

Hipólito Finat | findmypast.co.uk