FreeBMD Updated

On Thursday last FreeBMD, a volunteer transcription of the index to civil registrations in England and Wales, was updated. The site now contains 122,117,046 individual records and nearly 157 million total records. If you searched before and didn't find what you sought its worth going back to see if the index entry of interest has been added.

Births are now reasonably complete from mid-1837 to 1910, except for gaps in the 1850s, 1862 and 1881. Marriages are reasonably complete to 1915. Deaths still have a way to go for 1860 and 1861, but are otherwise reasonably complete to 1911.

I was surprised on Dick Eastman's Skypecast last Saturday to find that some folks don't know you can search FreeBMD without cost through ancestry.com or ancestry.co.uk. While I prefer the original FreeBMD search engine, found here, the site does suffer from slow response at times and you will likely find yourself waiting around less if you search through ancestry. It will likely require a free registration.