Thursday, January 19, 2006

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Ancestry.co.uk - Genealogy and Family History Records

England & Wales, BMD Index: 1837-1983

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This search returns the images of the pages that may contain the name you are searching for.

Search the Birth index images

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Search the Death index images

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Search the partial FreeBMD index, 1837-1983


This search returns names from the partially completed FreeBMD index. It is especially useful for names before 1900.

Since the original birth, marriage and death registers are not open to the public, getting access to the information on one of these certificates is done by first searching the national birth, marriage and death indexes, that have been created by the GRO for this purpose. The indexes for the three events are each divided into quarterly volumes, with the names for each quarter listed alphabetically. Once an entry in one of the indexes is found, you are then able to use that information to order of copy of a death, marriage or birth certificate from the GRO/ONS. The other information that can be obtained from the index includes: year, record type, quarter (March, June, September, and December), district (each county in England and Wales was divided up into registration districts), volume, and page number. Note: names were entered into the volume of the quarter in which notification of the event was received, not necessarily the quarter in which the event actually occurred.

The massive task of digitising and, making searchable, the names contained in the GRO indexes has been underway for a few years now. This database is made available to Ancestry.com users, courtesy of the volunteers of the FreeBMD organization. The leadership of FreeBMD has organized the permissions and tools necessary to enable hundreds of volunteers to convert to electronic text, and publish online, searchable indexes to the civil registrations in England and Wales. FreeBMD has already indexed more than 90 million names between the years of 1837 and 1983, and more names continue to be added everyday. Ancestry will add to this database as FreeBMD provides more names. It is estimated that more than 50% of the names between 1837 and 1900 have been indexed. Because of the nature of the index you will note that not all of the fields have been indexed all of the time. Until 1866, most of the indexes were handwritten, making the task of conversion sometimes difficult.

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