Speaking as someone who is not able to visit the Records Offices in person, I am grateful for any digitization project. I have used Essex RO's site extensively to view parish records from the 1600's and (in parishes where they survive) the 1500's for some of my lines that left England well before my Devon & Cornwall lines emigrated. Their site is not free, but neither was their digitization process. I also used BMDRegisters a few years ago to view a number of non-conformist records from Bible Christian circuits on the Devon/Cornwall border and have done extensive page-by-page searching in the Warwickshire parish records on Ancestry; again, neither record set is free, but both are worth the cost in the opinion of this non-local researcher. Liz Loveland Massachusetts, USA Terryblackmore@blueyonder.co.uk wrote: "Several years ago I came to the conclusion that every time I forked out a fee to use for one of the Services offered on the internet I wasted my time and money. Rare if ever did I ever get more than a name, let alone any real details. Most of what I saw was basically a repeat of a small part of the information already obtained from the Devon PRO at Exeter for a fraction of the price. Plus I had already viewed that information to know it was correct. Unlike on line, where you pay and pray. One now thinks that you can't beat a visit to the Devon PRO to obtain your information. Roll on the day when all the PROs are Virtual Sites and on the internet. Where you can request to see any document from their archives. Now that would really be something to behold."

Well said Liz, There are many of us in the UK who also cannot visit ROs or other establishments to research our families for a variety of reasons, mine is disability and I have only been able to further my research by sometimes paying for information or copies of documents from the ROs and joining such websites as Ancestry. From my point of view, more confirmation of facts is required when working at a distance, but I have found that many ROs and recently in my research, Oxford Colleges, their Archivists and Institutions have all been enormously helpful as has membership of relevant FHS's. Over the years I have purchased quite a few microfiche of original PRs and many other resources for the areas in which I am interested and a number of the ROs I use have had and are having their Wills and documents digitalised and available online which for me is a real bonus whether I have to pay for copies or not is irrelevant if I need it. The cost and whether it is considered to be value for money is down to the individual. For me every penny spent has been fruitful in one way or another to confirm something or show that one is on the wrong track. One chooses how to do Family History research, we all do it in a way that suits us and we all have different views on how to do it - horses for courses one might say! Jean Hodges Hampshire UK -----Original Message----- From: devon-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:devon-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Liz Loveland Sent: 18 January 2014 21:02 To: devon@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [DEV] Paying for Family information Speaking as someone who is not able to visit the Records Offices in person, I am grateful for any digitization project. I have used Essex RO's site extensively to view parish records from the 1600's and (in parishes where they survive) the 1500's for some of my lines that left England well before my Devon & Cornwall lines emigrated. Their site is not free, but neither was their digitization process. I also used BMDRegisters a few years ago to view a number of non-conformist records from Bible Christian circuits on the Devon/Cornwall border and have done extensive page-by-page searching in the Warwickshire parish records on Ancestry; again, neither record set is free, but both are worth the cost in the opinion of this non-local researcher. Liz Loveland Massachusetts, USA Terryblackmore@blueyonder.co.uk wrote: "Several years ago I came to the conclusion that every time I forked out a fee to use for one of the Services offered on the internet I wasted my time and money. Rare if ever did I ever get more than a name, let alone any real details. Most of what I saw was basically a repeat of a small part of the information already obtained from the Devon PRO at Exeter for a fraction of the price. Plus I had already viewed that information to know it was correct. Unlike on line, where you pay and pray. One now thinks that you can't beat a visit to the Devon PRO to obtain your information. Roll on the day when all the PROs are Virtual Sites and on the internet. Where you can request to see any document from their archives. Now that would really be something to behold." ------------------------------------------ The DEVON-L mailing list is co-sponsored by GENUKI/Devon ( http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/ ) and the Devon FHS (http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ ) List archive for Devon can be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index/DEVON/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to DEVON-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message