SMITH-UK-L Archives

From: "therra" <>
Subject: FW: FreeBDM - a great new resource
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 18:12:17 -0800

I found this very interesting so am forwarding it on to everyone.

Marie (Canada)
List Administrator
http://www.ancestral-echoes.com
researching Anderson, Cutler, Smith, Stannard and related names.
The whole past is the procession of the present



-----Original Message-----
From: Sharyn Seaboryne [mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 3:47 PM
To:
Subject: FreeBDM - a great new resource


Hello All

I have just discovered a great new resource that will no doubt help many of
us with our Hampshire and other English/Welsh research.

Some of you may be aware of the FreeBDM Project - an ambitious one, which
aims to make the civil registration indexes to pre-1900 English/Welsh
births,deaths and marriages available free online. Obviously this has the
advantage of making these indexes readily available to anyone with internet
access, regardless of which little corner of the world you live.

It is a large project and many volunteers are needed to complete it. But at
last some of the data is now available on line, being added to regularly
(currently nearly 7 million entries). It is by no means complete but a good
starting point.

But its use goes a bit further than that.

If you can find your known marriage partner in the index, you can then
search to identify anyone else in the quarter year with the same
registration number. This gives you one or more potential spouses, which you
can cross check with other info eg. census to find the right one.

Let me give you an step by step example from my own Hampshire research. I
have a relative Edward Marsh, born in Hurstbourne Tarrant, Hampshire in
1846. He later emigrated to New Zealand with his wife Mary Ann Louise. I
have been unable to find their marriage in the nearby parish registers. Lets
see if we can find her maiden name.

1. Go to the website http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/ and click the Search
button
2. On the Search page, select "Marriage" in the Event Type box, enter the
start date mar 1853 (assuming he was atleast 16 at marriage), enter Dec 1883
in the end date (since I know he was in NZ by then). Enter his surname
"Marsh" and his first name "Edward". Then click the "Find" button at the
bottom of the page...... Note - you can further limit the geographical area
of interest to either a civil registration district or a county by making a
selection in the appropriate boxes on this page. You can also limit the
entries to a spouse of a certain first name too, but we wont do that in case
Mary Ann has a slightly different first name. For now we will leave the area
open since Edward has proved a little elusive in Hampshire.
3. This yields some 20 Edward Marsh's married in this time frame (bit
remember not all years in this 30 year period will be available yet).

The results are of the format:
Marriages June 1869
Marsh, Edward Brentford 3a 71 Kooloo

Meaning, Edward Marsh was married in the civil registration district of
Brentford in the 2nd quarter of 1869. Brentford comes under the registration
district code "3a" and the folio number his entry occurs on is "71".The data
was kindly typed in by Kooloo.

Note "Brentford", "71" and "Kooloo" are all in hypertext (underlines in
blue). You can click on any of these for further info. Say you dont know
where Brentford is, click on it and it will take you to a description of
that registration district. You could click on the transcribers name should
you want to contact them.

4. But for now, our interest lies in the clickable "71" - if we click on
that it gives us the following:
Frost Anthony Brentford 3a 71 shelbert
Knight Harriet Brentford 3a 71 bjm
Marsh Edward Brentford 3a 71 kooloo
Elms Elizabeth Brentford 3a 71 dse

This means that these 4 people are all marriage parties recorded on folio 71
of district 3a for the second quarter for 1869. It does NOT tell us whom
married whom. Edward may have married Elizabeth or Harriet. In my case I am
looking for someone called Mary Ann Louise - so I reject this quarter
altogether and carry on through the remaining quarter years with hits for
Edward Marsh.

5. So .. a few minutes later - I have made a wee list of all those quarters
in which Edward Marsh and a woman called Mary Ann/Louise might have got
married.

Here is the list - only 2 possibilities:
Marsh Edward and Mary Ann L WOOD Lambeth 1d 474 4th quarter 1868
Marsh Edward and Mary Ann Lee Cheltenham 6a 588 1st quarter 1869

Neither from Hampshire - I am not sure where Cheltenham is so I click on it
and find it is in Gloucestershire which seems less likely for my chap,based
on what I know about him, than Lambeth (Greater London).

I have other information which confirms that Mary Ann Wood is the correct
entry and I could go on and order their marriage certicate if I needed it.

All this achieve much quicker than it would take to get to the nearest
microfiche of the indexes, let alone search them. All from the comfort of my
one home!

Of course things do not run as smoothly as that all the time. I found quite
regularly that there might be 3 males and 1 female to a folio page. This may
be due to difficulties reading the folio numbers, incomplete indexes etc.
eg. I have a Jane Harriet PIBWORTH, who I know from my own searching of the
marriage index married Alfred CONSTABLE in 2nd quarter 1869 in Portsea,
Hampshire. But when I used her as a test case for the freeBDM index, her
only apparent partner is one Edward BARTHOLOMEW. There is no one of any
surname starting with CON in the marriage index for this quarter. I assume
that means he has not been entered yet -since I know for sure he is there!

So - keep a watch on this site and see how you go. It seems so far that
marriage entries far out number births and deaths. You can check the
coverage for any event and year combination.

I would be glad to help anyone who needs further assistance with using this
site. Please write to me personally at (remember if
you hit the "replY" buttonm the message will go to the Hampshire List).

May I just pose a little pearl - the more volunteers they have, the sooner
this great resource will be completed and available to us all. If we each
did a little transcribing..... I understand you do not need to have access
to a fiche reader to assist. Full details of volunteering for this
worthwhile project are available on the website.

Have a great day
Regards

Sharyn Seaboryne
Wellington, New Zealand (Sunny and very hot today!)

List Owner Hampshire England, DURRANT & CORNEY Mailing Lists at Rootsweb

______________________________

This thread:

• FW: FreeBDM - a great new resource by "therra" <>