Find My Past is a leading UK-based online genealogy service owned by UK company Brightsolid.[1][2] It was awarded the Queen's Award for Innovation in 2007.[3] In October 2011 Find My Past used the new UK product placement legislation opportunites by sponsoring a genealogy TV series. The UK TV series was named 'Find My Past' and uses the Find My Past genealogical resources to discover peoples' roots.[1]
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According to the account on Find My Past's website, the company originated in 1965 as a small group of professional genealogists called 'Title Research'.[4] In 2001 they started an online project, called 1837online, which aimed to publish copies of the birth, marriage and death register pages of the General Register Office (GRO). Another online project, FreeBMD, had already been busy since 1999, gradually transcribing the indexes using volunteers and publishing searchable indexes freely on the internet.[5]
In April 2003 www.1837online.com went live online.[5] This was a pay-per-view service allowing access to images of the pages of the original GRO registers. Initially there was no index of individual entries for the period before 1984, but subsequent years had already been electronically recorded by the GRO and were fully searchable.[5] Gradually the UK Censuses, passenger lists and other databases were added to the site, the first being an index of the 1861 England and Wales Census in 2005.[5]
1837online renamed itself Findmypast because of its scope had spread beyond the GRO registers.[4]. The Queen's Award for Innovation was awarded to Title Research Group Ltd in 2007, for their provision of public, online access to the birth, marriage and death records.[3]
In 2008 (now part of Brightsolid) Findmypast gained a license to publish the 1911 England and Wales Census, which was added to the site in May.[4] In 2011 Find My past became sponsors of the Society of Genealogists in their centenary year and agreed a reciprocal arrangement where each would give access to one another's online databases.[6]
In May 2011 Findmypast.ie was launched in the Republic of Ireland, intending to make millions of Irish records available online.[2]
Findmypast began sponsoring the UK television channel 'Yesterday' in 2010. A new TV series starting in October 2011, funded by Findmypast.co.uk, was believed to be the first example of a product placement and advertiser funded programming deal for a factual TV series in the country.[7]
There are currently a wide variety of census, directory and historical record information available, primarily from UK sources.[8] Find My Past claim to have 750 million searchable records but, though it is possible to search their indexes for free, a payment or subscription is required to access the full data.[9]