Ancestry England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916-2005

Helping Celebrate Genealogy Gripe Week

I`m not sure whether to gripe, cheer or stay quiet about this one!

On January 28th Ancestry announced on their recent genealogy database page the
England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916-2005. I tried it and found my own birth index entry by a direct search -- no scanning through a page, or series of pages, it might be on.

A little later I tried again and the same search didn't work. I even tried contacting Lesley Anderson, Ancestry guru, who couldn't get it to work as a direct search.

It now appears to be working again - somewhat! Will it remain so?

This should be, a very nice facility. It's like they completed the task for FreeBMD.

Your search should be able to include the mother's maiden. Then finding index entries for siblings should be easy, if one of the father's or mother's surname isn't too common, especially if you can limit the date range and location. You need to go to the advanced search to force an exact match.

Unfortunately at last try the system was still flaky. I found a birth, but could not find it again when the mother's maiden name was entered even though it showed up on the digitized record.

Naturally if the entry is missing in the original GRO record, as for one of my brothers, you're out of luck.