08 May 2018

Ancestry adds 1939 National Register for England and Wales

One of the big reasons to subscribe to Findmypast since 2 November 2015 has been the 1939 England and Wales Register of the population complete with indexes, transcripts and linked images of the original register. With the new release of the register on Ancestry on 8 May 2018 with indexes, transcripts and linked images that advantage disappears.
The Register, data collected on 29 September 1939 with more than 45 million records, is important as it helps fill in the gap between the 1921 census, which will be released after the 100 year embargo period, and the 1951 census. The 1931 census was destroyed and no census was taken in 1941.
Findmypast still has advantages. Ancestry's field on its search form for keyword in which one can enter address does not appear to be as effective as the Findmypast specialized address search.
And Findmypast still has the massive advantage of digitized newspaper searches through a link to the British Newspaper Archive.
MyHeritage have had access to an index and transcripts of the Register, but without images, since early March.

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