Scots Origins is, according to the Web site, the “official, Governmental source of genealogical data for Scotland.” Scots Origins allows you to search:

• Old Parish Registers of births/baptisms and banns/marriages—1553 to 1854
  
• Statutory Registers of births and marriages—1855 to 1899
  
• Statutory Registers of deaths—1855 to 1924
  
• Census records for 1881 (full transcriptions–the same data available from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City)
  
• Census records for 1891 (plus digitized images, as of this month)
  

English Origins is, according to the Web site, the “exclusive provider of the Society of Genealogists’ records.” English Origins allows you to search:

• Marriage Licence Allegations Index 1694-1850
• Bank of England Will Extracts Index 1717-1845
• Archdeaconry Court of London Wills Index 1750-1800
• London Apprenticeship Abstracts 1568-1850
• London Consistory Court Depositions Index 1700-1713
• Boyd's Marriage Index 1538-1837 Cambridgeshire and Suffolk

The Web sites for both Scots and English Origins offer explanations of the record sources. It is important to note the difference between the two sites, however. The Scots site contains abstracts of official government records. The English site contains abstracts of some indexes that are available at the Society of Genealogists, and is not an official site for the Public Record Office there.

Origins.net , www.origins.net, offers a free surname search across both Scots Origins and English Origins. This is a good place to start before you give credit card information to either site. You can type in the surname and a year range and see how many hits for the name you receive on both sites. If it’s a common surname, such as my maiden name Kell(e)y, you’ll see that English Origins has 302 records and Scots Origins has 50,954 records for the time frame 1538-1924. If I wanted to view all of these hits, I’d spend a minor fortune, so I’d need to refine my search. Both Scots and English Origins charge £6 (about $9 U.S.) for the initial search. In Scots Origins, that gives you 30 page downloads within a 24-hour period. A page will contain multiple entries (or, if there are only a few hits, a page will contain those hits). In English Origins, you’re given 150 credits to start with for a 48-hour period. If you’re not careful, those credits will go away quickly. I didn’t really appreciate how the English Origins credits worked at first, as I was more familiar with Scots Origins and its page downloads.

When I refined my Kelly search to William Kelly from 1780-1871, I received a number of hits that I wanted to take a look at. When I pulled up the screen to look at each source that contained hits, I was charged credits for the amount of hits on each screen I looked at. I only realized this when I clicked on a source that contained over 200 hits and I was informed that I only had 33 credits left. I’m not real comfortable with the way that Origins.net handles the credits on English Origins as it seems that you can go through 150 credits within a matter of minutes. I guess the solution is to make sure that your search is very refined and not too general. For instance, make sure you use a surname and a given name and narrow down the years to search, or you’ll probably receive a lot of hits and when you go to look at them, your credits will evaporate quickly.

When Scots Origins first appeared, I searched and successfully found a marriage record for one of my husband’s ancestors. After giving more credit card information, I ordered a copy of the record, which I received in less than two weeks. I was very satisfied with this service. The extracts cost £10 each including postage, which I think is very reasonable (certainly cheaper than an airplane ticket!).

I’m not sure that I’d order copies of records found in English Origins unless it was blatantly obvious that it was the right ancestor, which is hard to tell in some of the indexes on this site. For instance, in the Marriage Licence Allegations Index 1694-1850, the only information you get is the date of the license, the surname of the groom and the surname of the bride. To get more information, you need to order a copy for £10.

After I entered all of my credit card information so I could access the Scots Origins site, the toolbar and address bar on my browser disappeared. I was unable to get them back until I left Scots Origins. The only way to navigate without those two bars was to go to View on the menu bar and select Go To. I’m not quite clear why that happened, but the Scots Origins site does say that it is working on upgrading the appearance of the site, so this could be part of the problem.

Both Scots Origins and English Origins plan to add more records as time goes on. Both sites are wonderful resources for those with Scottish or English ancestry. The English Origins site seems to be more of a money maker than the Scots Origins site, because of the way it handles credits, but if you’re careful in your search, you can use the site effectively. Kudos to Origins.net for offering family researchers these services.

Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, CGRS, CGL, is the managing editor of Genealogical Computing, editor of the Board for Certification of Genealogists’ newsletter OnBoard, the creator of Clooz—the electronic filing cabinet for genealogical records, co-creator of the new family health history program GeneWeaver, and a frequent contributor to Ancestry. She can be reached via e-mail at gceditor@ancestry.com.