Births Marriages and Deaths - FreeBMD

[RosemaryC]

If you are looking for an ancestor who was born, married or died in England or Wales after civil registration began in 1837, you may want to begin by consulting the FreeBMD search engine at http://www.freebmd.org.uk/
FreeBMD is an ongoing project to transcribe the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales, and provide free Internet access to the transcribed records. It is a part of the FreeUKGEN family, which also includes FreeCEN (Census data) and FreeREG (Parish Registers).
The recording of births, marriages and deaths was started in 1837 and is one of the most significant resources for genealogical research. The transcribing of the records is carried out by teams of dedicated volunteers and contains index information for the period 1837-1983.
The FreeBMD search engine can help you find marriages - just enter the names of the bride and groom in the search engine. It can also (after 1911) help you find children born with a specific surname and specific mother's maide name (known as a parent search).
Once you find an entry that you think applies to your ancestor, you will then need to order the specific certificate from the General Register Office and pay a fee for doing so, using the specific information provided by your search. (The GRO order site is at http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/)

 

[Carla]

I have used this site in the past and can verify it is very useful.

 

[AnneC]

These Freexxx sites are reliant on volunteers to transcribe data, so if anyone has any free time and could volunteer to work on some of the transcriptions it would help to make the sites even more useful. The link to be a volunteer can be found on the home page of any of the sites.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Sorry! Is that better now?

Not sure why its doing it I thought it might have been the < /> bits but if you move your mouse over your post you will see that the whole last line still shows as a link!!

There is an "unlink" button which is the "broken chain" button next to the green tree in the toolbar just above where you type. Highlighting the text and "unlinking" should work.

HOWEVER please don't worry about it, this is the sort of minor thing that the moderators would tidy up without you ever having to worry about it. It's just that Peter is still in the process of determining how best to assign moderator permissions so at present other peoples posts cant yet be edited.

 

[peter]

These Freexxx sites are reliant on volunteers to transcribe data, so if anyone has any free time and could volunteer to work on some of the transcriptions it would help to make the sites even more useful. The link to be a volunteer can be found on the home page of any of the sites.

FreeREG is a fantastic resource, but one which needs more transcribers and more co-ordinators, because unfortunately the coverage is quite sparse (Norfolk is a wonderful exception).

I would encourage anyone thinking of transcribing for FreeBMD or FreeCEN to divert their efforts to FreeREG. All of the GRO indexes and all of the censuses have been transcribed at least twice - but there are tens of millions of parish register entries that have NEVER been transcribed by anyone.

 

[Gillian]

Talking of parish registers, could someone please tell me how to find the appropriate parish register for baptisms pre-1837. I'm currently stuck with a village called Yalding in Kent, which isn't in Medway CityArk's list of parish registers. In FreeBMD you can simply click on the registration district to get a list of the civil parishes in that district. But what about pre-1837? I've posted a similar enquiry in the England, Kent forum.

 

[mowsehowse]

Talking of parish registers, could someone please tell me how to find the appropriate parish register for baptisms pre-1837. I'm currently stuck with a village called Yalding in Kent, which isn't in Medway CityArk's list of parish registers. In FreeBMD you can simply click on the registration district to get a list of the civil parishes in that district. But what about pre-1837? I've posted a similar enquiry in the England, Kent forum.

Hello Gillian; fingers crossed you might strike lucky on familysearch.org because many parishes are on the IGI, and you might get help from the Kent FHS. Is there an OPC for the area who would do a look up? Have you checked genuki to be sure you haven't missed anything available? You just might have to do it by trawling through micro fiche at the records office like we had to in "the old days"!!

 

[Gillian]

Thank you very much for your help. Alexander also told me about the OS maps on familysearch, which I hadn't known about. It's an eye-opener but hasn't helped me - yet. I do belong to the Kent FHS, so I could contact them. I must also go through genuki more carefully and perhaps contact medway cityark as well. I obviously have a lot of homework to do. But now it's 5 to midnight here in Finland so perhaps I won't do any of that right now! Good night

 

[GrahamSimons]

FreeBMD also appears on Ancestry. The advantage of searching the Ancestry version is that it allows more latitude in your search terms: while FreeBMD will find exact Christian names only, or the exact first few characters, Ancestry will bring up near-misses. This helps where spellings have changed over time.

 

[GrahamSimons]

Talking of parish registers, could someone please tell me how to find the appropriate parish register for baptisms pre-1837. I'm currently stuck with a village called Yalding in Kent, which isn't in Medway CityArk's list of parish registers. In FreeBMD you can simply click on the registration district to get a list of the civil parishes in that district. But what about pre-1837? I've posted a similar enquiry in the England, Kent forum.

Go to the genuki website - for most counties, indeed parishes, it gives excellent detail of what registers are held where. www.genuki.org.uk

 

[Gillian]

Thank you, Graham. I realise I was hasty and should have done more research before writing my note. I have now discovered from Genuki that I shall have to consult the NW Kent FHS.