Stepping Stones Genealogy: Lesson 5 - The GRO and FreeBDM for BDM’s in England & Wales

The GRO and FreeBDM for BDM’s in England & Wales

You can access the English birth and death indexes at the GRO here:

https://www.gov.uk/research-family-history

You will need to register (free) and then find a link that will say “Order a certificate online” or

The mother's maiden name was added to the births, marriages and deaths index (BMD) held by the GRO (General Register Office) from the September quarter of 1911. But the GRO have added the mother’s maiden name to births prior to 1911 if known.

Clicking on order certificate does not mean you have to actually order a certificate, but if you do they cost £9.25 each and sent snail mail.

The GRO are currently assessing the results of a scheme that they ran earlier this year where you could order a birth certificate and it was emailed to you as a .pdf document for the cost of £5.00 each. Currently now available until July 2018.

If they decide that doing this worked for everyone then they may make it permanent.

Currently marriages are not available to search on the GRO web site. However, there is a way to find the registration number for marriages through the FreeBMD web site.

GRO covers Sep 1837-1918

Free BMD covers Sep 1837-1983

You will eventually get to this screen

Unlike the Australian Indexes where you can search +/- 5 or 10 years or a range of years, you are limited to +/- 2 years with the GRO.

Still with perseverance you can get some good results. (See Below) This is the result of searching for the births and deaths of the children of Alfred and Sarah Hawkins. Of course, it helped that Sarah had the unusual maiden name of OUTTERIDGE. If you don’t find anything first time, remember to try different spellings.

Death of Florence Mary Hawkins

Thank you to Rae Hawkins for her permission to use this search result, as an example.

FreeBMD

This web site is the result of many people around the world transcribing the GRO indexes into a searchable database, and they are still working on it. As at 6 July 2017 they had 262,363,308 records.

I’m using Alfred & Sarah Hawkins to show how to find a marriage. But you can use the site to search births and deaths as well.

https://www.freebmd.org.uk/

Click Search to go to this screen.

Fill out as follows:

Select – Marriages

Surname: Hawkins

First Name(s): Alfred

Spouse surname: Outteridge

Date Range: Mar 1860 – Dec 1870

You can select a District and/or a County

As this marriage likely took place in London I’ve left it blank. London is confusing as it has so many registration districts and can also fall under Middlesex County.

Click Find

Result(s)

The results only show one partner. To confirm you have the correct marriage, make a note of the Quarter and Year and Volume Number and Page Number.

Click New Query.

Fill out like this:

No names required. Click Find.

Result(s):

It will show all couples who match the date, volume and page.

If we didn’t know Sarah’s surname then this result would give it to us. Sometimes the results will have more than one person with the same given name. But this still helps to narrow it down.

Unlike the Australian Certificates, English Certificates do not have the same amount of detailed information.

What you can find on English Certificates.

Birth Certificate:

Name, date and place of birth.
Father's name (if given at time of registration), place of birth and occupation.
Mother's name, place of birth, maiden surname and, after 1984, occupation.
(Registrations made before 1969 do not include details of the parents' place of birth and mother's occupation.)

Death Certificate:

Name, date and place of death.
Date and place of birth (before 1969 a certificate only showed age of deceased).
Occupation and usual address.
Cause of death.
The person who gave information for the death registration.

Marriage Certificate:

Date and place of marriage.
Name, age and marital status/condition of the parties.
Occupation and usual address.
Name and occupation of each party's father.
Names of the witnesses.
Name of the person who solemnised the marriage.

Once you get back beyond September 1837 you will need to look at Parish Registers.

Try FreeReg first.

https://www.freereg.org.uk/

This is another project like FreeBMD where people around the world volunteer to transcribe parish registers into this database.

The search engine is quite flexible. You can use * wildcard searches but only with specific (not multiple) parishes. Once you select the county the parish window will be automatically populated.

If you need more help with Parish Registers, you may need to consider joining a local (English, Scottish or Irish) Family History Group/Society. Many have transcribed the registers for their county and these are usually available online to their members. The annual membership varies, so you need to go to their web site to find out the cost. The web site should also show what is available to their members.

Some counties have Online Parish Councils. The one for Cornwall is fabulous and has transcriptions of the Parish Registers for free. They also have other records available. New transcriptions and records are still being added.

http://www.cornwall-opc-database.org/home/

All transcriptions or online databases are classed as secondary sources. You need to have an image of the record for it to be a primary source. Some online resources will offer a link to the actual image.

I also suggest that you take the time to check out Genuki

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng

You can select the county and then it will list sites with links to other web sites that have information on that county.

PARLOC

Parloc is an ENGLAND ONLY Parish Locator. It is no longer available to download directly from bluebeyond, the web page is no longer available.

There is a link to a Google Drive where you can download it.

After downloading and installing you get this opening screen: