Finding useful resources to aid you in your quest in researching your family tree can at times be a bit daunting, especially if you want a free resource, as they are hard to find especially when you are a newcomer to genealogy. This particular resource comes from a website that may not be as well known as some of the larger more subscription based genealogy websites but none the less the information it delivers is a little gem.
The resource is a website called FREE BMD, abbreviations for births, marriages and deaths. It was started in 1998 by three founder members whose goal was to produce a searchable database that contain all the birth, marriage and death registry numbers that is contained in the General Registry office where all the records are kept of every one that was born, married or died since 1837.It is a British based database and all the records only cover the UK, but foreign countries are welcome to explore the website in case they have distant relatives that were born or married in the UK.
Free BMD is officially registered as a charity because all of the work done on the website is funded by donations from any one who visits the site and it is totally voluntary. They do have sponsorship by other companies that are willing to donate for the work that is contributed. The project is ongoing as they are constantly developing the website and adding new registers regularly.
Free BMD Homepage
Upon reaching the homepage of the website you are presented with quite a simple layout consisting of just five main tool bar controls and an introduction of what the website is about . You will notice at the bottom of the page the various companies that are sponsoring the site.
Apart from the BMB records that is the main focus of the site free BMD is also focusing on two other projects that is defined on the homepage, FREECENSUS and FREEREG. These projects are still fairly new and there is not too much data to follow .
The Free census will be transcribing all of the census records starting from the very first UK census back in 1841. As you can see there is a lot of work to be done and it will take a long time to deliver the information. In the free Reg they are concentrating on parish records which is a much sought after resource. As you are probably aware this is another area that will take a long time to complete as these records go back two or three centuries.
Become a Voluntary Transcriber
There is an option for people who may wish to join the Free BMD as a transcriber, but only on a voluntary basis, so there is no pay involved. The roll of the transcriber will be to help going through the registry records and typing them into the database. This will suit anyone who has a keen interest in this part of genealogy and doesn’t mind spending a few hours a day typing in on their keyboard.
A General Information page is available where you can see all the activity that is going on in the every day running of the data base. You have the option to let the site managers know if you come across a system failure while you are using the site program and they will look into the problem.
As already been mentioned when the project started there was only 3 people involved but now the team has expanded into quite a large group. There are the main top founders who are the executives and trustees and other top staff include website testers, Coordinators and district team coordinators, all involved to keep the database progressing and expanding
Progress Charts
The most impressive part of the info page is the coverage charts showing all of the registry records covered from when the records started back in 1837 right up to the present. all three respective sections, marriage, birth and death are clearly marked and presented.
Each of the the charts progress in groups of ten years and when a certain part in completed it is shaded in red. You will see the massive scale of the work that has been put into the project which has charted each registry entry going back a hundred and eighty years, A staggering three hundred and sixty eight million records has been transcribed so far, that really is quite impressive.
Free BMD records search
The main section of the website is the actual record search facility which is the center point of the whole database. The layout and operating system is very easy to use and rather self explanatory, but for any one who is using the resource for the first time here is an explanation and guide for your convenience.
On the search menu you will see a variety of boxed areas that is just a simple matter of ticking on them depending on what you want to choose. To the right you will see a red box marked as HELP, clicking on that will send you to a help page with a brief explanation of what to do.
Birth/ Marriage /Death /All
The first four boxes to the left are for the choice of which type of record you want to explore, either Birth, death, marriage or all of them. It is recommended not to choose the all box as there would be a large random result and it would be rather confusing for any one on their first time using the database, but the more experienced can utilize it for finding several results faster.
Surname -First Names
On the next set of boxes these are used to type in a surname and a first name, these first two boxes will refer to any of the boxes above, but more so if you are just looking for one person on the records, such as a birth or death record. in the first name box you have the opportunity to type in a second name also or just the initial of the second name. Although the person that you are searching had two or three names before their surname they were not always recorded on the register. At this stage you will have to experiment with both all variations.
Spouse / Mother Surname – Spouse First Name
Moving onto the the next two boxes you have the function that will be involved more with marriage records or birth records that have the mothers maiden name displayed. There is one point about about mothers surnames being on birth records is that this only occurred after September 1911, they were still included in the registry but left out of the obtainable record. Until that point the mothers surname was not included on the record, which made checking to see if you had found the correct person that you were searching for a bit of trial and error.
Death Age / DOB
In the next section there is the section that gives you two choices of search parameters, age of death or date of birth. With the age of death, which was included in the registers from January 1866 helped to pinpoint the persons actual age when he died, so this would have helped working out when he was born.
The date of birth was included in April 1969 and was a major asset for searching for dead relatives. So if you searched for someone and you know definitely when they were born then you just type this date in, or if you have a round about idea then you can put in a certain date range where the exact date will be between.
Date Range
The next box is where you may choose a specific date range where you want your search to start and to end. For example you were looking for a relative born between 1900 – 1910, then you will put the 1900 in the first box and and 1910 in the last and hopefully you will find a result
You will also notice that there are two parts to each search boxes ,one part has a column comtaining the first three letters of months that split the year into four quarters, March, June, September and December. So if the person you were searching for was born in April of a certain year then he or she will be in the second quarter and have June displayed when you receive the final result.
You can also set this yourself to help fine tune a search, if you know the year of the event and near enough the month then in the first box set one month to start and in the next month set the other to either the same month or add on the next quarter.
Volume / Page
In the last box there is volume and page indicator. When you actually find the person you are looking for you will see these boxes filled with the volume and page number that the actual record was recorded in the registry. Many volumes were produced over the years with hundreds of pages and one page may contain four or five entries.
Districts and Counties
We now come to the two large boxes to the right containing the districts and the counties. The district search is for a particular area that has its own local registry. This is useful if you know if a person was born in a certain town or you knew the exact location where your grandparents were married, it will also narrow down the search results you may obtain.
Searching by counties can be used if you are not sure of the town or local areas of the particular event but you know the county where it happened . This will make the search easier but your search result will be a lot higher. You can in fact have a lot of people with the same name in just one county which is a case of sifting through them and trying to eliminating them down to the correct result
Final result
The final input controls down below are the Find, count and reset buttons all displayed in red. The find button will search in the database, after you have input the category and the names you wish to be found will eventually be displayed. The count button will only give a sum total of the results that it has found.
You can reset the the names and all the other search boxes by using the reset button so all the boxes are empty, a handy tool if you think you have made a few mistakes and want to start from the beginning
When you have obtained your result and satisfied that you have found the correct person you will see some interesting data displayed. For the benefit of some one who may be using the database for the first time here is a typical readout of a birth record.
Surname–First Name/ second name or initial–Mother surname –District–Vol + Page number–info–symbol.
As you can see there is a surname but the first name could be either just one or followed by a middle name or just the initial. Next there is the surname of the mother, this would be her maiden name if she is married. She will be included if the birth was after September 1911 other wise it will be omitted. The district will be displayed next followed by the volume and page number. There is a final button at the end that says info plus a symbol of a pair of glasses, but i will explain them.
In the display you will see that some of the display is in different colours and underlined, they are links and you can click on them to see additional information. The district in blue, volume and page in blue and the info in red. Pressing on either of them or the glasses symbol will take you to a new page.
Additional Information
District
On this page you will see your result again and plus the actual county where the district is situated. In addition there are two more sets of link buttons you can press, one is for more information which will give a full explanation about registration districts and the other will take you to a page about the district on your search result.
In the district page you will see a full explanation of all the areas that are covered by that particular registry. Sometimes over the years you will notice that some boundaries are added or others are sent to a different registry or even the district itself could be renamed.
Vol/Page
In the actual register where your person you searched for there are usually more than one person being displayed, it also depends on the type of event being recorded. Marriage records hold more information about the bride and groom so less marriages are shown, but deaths and births there can be a lot more. Pressing the volume/page link you will see a drop down menu with all the names of the participants and they all have the same volume/page number.
Info
With this link you will be sent to a page with the display of your result and you have the ability to see who the actual transcriber is who copied the record from the register. You can also make a request to make an ammendment if you feel that the info recorded may be wrong or have a few mistakes, the actual procedure for this is mentioned on the page
Glasses symbol
This unusual looking link is shaped like a pair of glasses is in fact the scan request. pressing the link will send you to another page where you can actually download a copy of the full page of the registry so you can look at the entry yourself. this is a valuable piece of information as you can collect quite a library of these copies over time. you have to be aware that the rgistry copy is not an actual image of the event where the wedding or birth took place as it is only a transcript. For copies of for example a marriage or christening, which is not included in the BMD transcripts you would have to obtain from another resource where you would have to pay a subscription.
Conclusion
This website with the records and information it contains is certainly a great asset for anyone who wants to trace people from their family tree. With the help of the results you obtain it can certainly open new doors with your genealogy research. There is no end to the amount search requests you make and you may be well surprised to what you discover.
Being a free resource it has it’s limits to what it can offer you but why not give it a try, remember it wont cost you anything, but you can donate if you feel you want to.
Here is the website address–
Your Family past 