Getting to the Roots of Your Family - RootsWeb - Ancestry.com

1. FreeBMD
FreeBMD is a computerized fully searchable index made from the national civil registration
indexes. You can search all of England and Wales for entries from July 1837-1929 (although
currently not much after WWI has been transcribed).
NOTE: All data for these dates are not yet extracted and put in FreeBMD. Coverage charts
are available on FreeBMD. Even for years that are covered “100%”, I have found obvious
omissions, e.g. where three men and only two women have the same page reference. This would
seem to indicate that there are three marriages on the same register page but only two of the
brides are in the index. This could imply that the index is incomplete, or an error was made.
a) Open the Internet.
b) In the address bar, type in www.freebmd.org.uk and hit enter.
c) Scroll to, and Click on Search.
d) Select Births, Deaths, or Marriages.
e) Type in Name and Date information. (Use the ‘spouse’ fields on marriage searches
only. The mother’s maiden name applies only to births after 1910.)
f) Optional— Select County and or District. (I recommend leaving this blank, at least for
your initial search.)
g) Click Find. If "No Matches" is indicated, expand the search or check the coverage
charts to see if your year has been indexed.
h) If you click on the name of the district and then on “more information about it can be
found here” you can see the county the district was in and the parishes within that
district.
i) If you click on the page number of a marriage you can see the other names on that
page—the spouse should be one of them. Where possible verify a marriage search using
www.ukbmd.org.uk.
2. UKBMD
While FREEBMD is an index of the national registers, UKBMD is an index of the local civil
registration registers. Most of the time they are the same, but not always.
UKBMD is particularly valuable for marriages, as it will identify for certain the spouse as well
as the exact location of marriage. Once the place of marriage is known, the FHL Catalog can be
searched to determine if a copy of the marriage can be found in the parish registers. Steps:
1. Open the Internet.
2. In the address bar, type in www.ukbmd.org.uk.
3. On the left-hand side of the page, choose a county and click the “County” button.
4. Look down the page for “Local BMD” links, click on the link.
5. Follow the instructions!
3. Index images at www.ancestry.com Ancestry has images of the national civil registration
index books. You can use these to verify information found on FreeBMD, or look up names in
cases where FreeBMD has not indexed the year you need (or they missed your entry!).
Steps:
1. Go to www.Ancestry.com
2. Click on the “Search” tab at the top
3. Scroll down to “Browse by location” select region “UK & Ireland,” then
“England.”