Comparing websites – Birth, marriage and death indexes for England and Wales

I recently delivered a talk at Rootstech 2018, which was well-received, and this spurred me on to return to some work I did on comparing the online indexes that appear on various websites. This post is an overview of the main sites and their coverage, and will be followed by more in-depth looks at the individual sites. Anyone who doesn't mind listening to me for an hour can view the Rootstech presentation in full. 

indexes Indexes to the birth, marriage and death registers for England and Wales are very widely available. You will find them on a number of sites, some free, some commercial. Although the records are (theoretically) the same, there are differences between the various indexes, and it is worth knowing about them to get the best results from your searches.

There is a single set of records for births, marriages and deaths since 1837, held by the General Register Office (GRO). But this is not the only set. Births and deaths are registered at a local Register Office, and the original records are still held locally. The central registers were compiled from copies sent to the GRO, called quarterly returns. 

Marriage registers are a little more complicated, because marriages could be performed in a number of places; principally, churches of various denominations, synagogues, Quaker meeting houses and register offices. The original registers may be with the church (or more usually a local record office), or at the register office, but, like the births and marriages, the GRO marriage registers were compiled from the quarterly returns.

The main sites where you can consult indexes to GRO registers are: 

• www.FreeBMD.org.uk
• www.Ancestry.co.uk
• www.FindmyPast.co.uk 
• www.genesreunited.co.uk
• www.familysearch.org
• www.gro.gov.uk
• www.myheritage.com
• www.thegenealogist.co.uk
• www.bmdindex.co.uk

None of them is complete, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses, so it is worth using a combination of them for best results. The most recent indexes are not online anywhere, they can only be consulted on microfiche at selected locations – details of these are on the GRO site.

Coverage

FreeBMD 1837-1983

As the name suggests, this is a free site, the result of an enormous amount of work by an army of volunteers. It is still a work in progress, although the coverage charts for births, marriages and deaths show that it is virtually complete up to the early 1960s, but with many gaps after that. It ends at 1983, the last year before the indexes were ‘born digital’ and the databases were retained by the GRO. 

Ancestry 1837-2005 (births and marriages) 1837-2007 (deaths)

This is a commercial site, but there is free access at many libraries, record offices and FamilySearch centres. However, Ancestry’s indexes 1837-1915 for all three events come from FreeBMD, and so are still free to search on Ancestry. You will not always get identical results from the two sites because both allow users to submit corrections, so any amendments or updates to FreeBMD after Ancestry acquired the data will only appear on FreeBMD. Similarly, any changes made on Ancestry will not appear on FreeBMD. Indexes from 1916 to 2005 (births and marriages) and 1916 to 2007 (deaths) are Ancestry’s own. You can also browse the images of the index volumes 1837 to 1983.

FindmyPast 1837-2005 (marriages) 1837-2006 (births) 1837-2007 (deaths)

Also a commercial site, but with free access at many libraries record offices and FamilySearch centres. All of the indexes on FindmyPast were prepared independently of those on FreeBMD or Ancestry. You will also find them on www.Genenesreunited.co.uk, which is owned by the same company. You can also browse images of the index pages 1937 to 1983. The indexes can also be searched free of charge on www.familysearch.org

General Register Office 1837-1917 (births) 1837-1957 (deaths) 

These indexes are free to search, but you need to register an account with the site and log in to use them. You need to do this anyway to order certificates from the GRO; ordering GRO certificates from anywhere else will cost more, and take longer. The GRO’s own indexes are the newest to appear online, and are limited in coverage, but they were created by re-indexing the quarterly returns. All of the others are transcriptions of the existing indexes. 

MyHeritage 1837-2005

It is not clear from the MyHeritage site whether they have compiled their own indexes, or obtained them under licence from another site. As well as the three databases for 1837-2005, there is a GRO birth index for 1911-1954. This is one of the three major commercial sites worldwide, along with Ancestry and FindmyPast, but has a relatively low profile in the UK, so it is less likely to be available free of charge in record office and libraries, but there is free access in FamilySearch centres.

  

The Genealogist 1837-2005

These indexes were prepared independently of the others, and are also available  on www.bmdindex.co.uk which belongs to the same company.  FamilySearch centres have free access, and some libraries and record offices may also have free access; but it is much less widespread than the two main commercial sites. 

Hidden treasures in FamilySearch

You may use FamilySearch by typing your search terms into the inviting-looking box on the home page, and then filtering the results. I sometimes do that, but most of the time I prefer to locate a specific resource and search within it. One of the main reasons for this is that I can keep track of what I have searched, and by extension, what I haven't searched. I don't just do this on FamilySearch, it's my preferred way of doing any online research. So I usually scroll down to 'All record collections' and select one of the ten regions (count them - TEN).

Since I mainly research within British Isles records, I then go straight to 'United Kingdom and Ireland' - so far, so good, and there are about 100 record sets to choose from. But many Brits spent time out of the country, inconveniently marrying, having children or dying while overseas. Records of these events can be very hard to track down, as they might be in a variety of places (or not recorded at all). This kind of research is never going to be easy, but there are some some very useful records in FamilySearch, if you know where to look. If, instead of clicking on 'United Kingdom and Ireland' (or any other region) you go to 'All record collections' you will see, on the right, a full alphabetical listing from Alabama to Zimbabwe, and on the left under 'Place' a list of eleven regions (count them - ELEVEN).

As well as the geographical groupings that you saw on the home page, there is also a category called 'Other'. I just love categories called 'other', 'miscellaneous' or 'supplementary' and so on. They are just begging to be explored, you never know what you are going to find there. In this case you will see the Family Group Records Collection, Archives Section 1942-1969', the old IGI and three 'World Miscellaneous'collections - Births and Baptisms, Deaths and Burials,and Marriages. Not only 'Other' but 'Miscellaneous' too! Unfortunately there is no easy way of finding out what registers or record sets are included, as each description contains the customary 'Only a few localities are included and the time period varies by locality.' If you follow the 'Learn more' link there is a coverage list which gives a little more detail. This varies from 'Connecticut, New London' to 'China', but still leaves over 300,000 entries under 'World miscellaneous'.

Lacking any more helpful detail, I used my fall-back tactic of searching for a common name to see where the results come from. Predictably, there are quite a lot of Smiths, more than 2500 results, in fact. The results on the first page are from China, New Zealand and Romania. Some of the China entries contain the useful extra descriptive information 'British Consulate', but to find out the actual source you need to dig a little deeper. If you expand an entry you  may find some extra details, but the really useful one is the 'source film number', right at the bottom. This is enough to locate the  film you need at a FamilySearch Centre (or Center, depending on your continent) or the Family History Library but you want to know what you are going to be looking at, right?

You can find this out using the Library Catalog (or Catalogue, depending...etc) and I usually have this open in another window or tab to save time. Under 'Search for' select 'Film numbers' and away you go. I searched for film number 1494353 from a 1904 baptism entry in Bucarest,

There are two registers on this film, here is the full description of the second one, Consulate Registers 1851-1948:

By now you have done an awful lot of clicking, but it is well worth it, for any entry on FamilySearch, not just the 'Others'. The Notes section tells you where the original is held, and in this case it also gives the document reference. This is what you should include in your source citation, noting of course that at this stage you have looked at a (partial) transcript, and not the original. As I expected, these registers are in the Public Record Office - now The National Archives (TNA). The document references are helpful, FO 625/2-4, 6 if you want to view the originals at The National Archives,which may be more convenient for you than a FamilySearch Centre (it is for me, but then I work there!). I you are unfamiliar with the referencing system, the above is not a single reference but four - FO 625/2, FO 625/3 and so on. 

A number of Consulate Registers are indexed in FamilySearch, though by no means all of them, but I haven't figured out a sure-fire way of working out exactly which ones are included. The 'search-by-Smith' technique isn't guaranteed to find everything. I found these records by accident because I like exploring, and although you might find an entry for your ancestors using the 'Search everything then filter' method, you might not. 

Apart from the Consulate Registers there are some other useful resources for the British overseas, or at sea in these World Miscellaneous collections. There are lots of entries from the major collection of Church of England overseas chaplaincy registers, formerly held at Guildhall Library, but now at the London Metropolitan Archives  and much more besides. Why not have a look, who knows what you might find?    

Coming up later this year...

My diary for this year is filling up, so for the benefit of anyone who wants to know what I am up to, here are some of the major events that will be keeping me busy over the next few months.

The big event for February is of course Who Do You Think You Are? - Live and there's a lot of work to be done before then, starting with something new we are trying out at Kew.

Thursday 21 February 'Focus on...' sessions at The National Archives Kew

The Thursday immediately before 'Who do you think you are? - Live' has turned into one of my busiest, as part of the day job. Large numbers of family historians come to London for the show, and extend their visit to take in some research at The National Archives and elsewhere while they are here. Last year we had the biggest turnout ever for a Thursday afternoon talk - it was given by Paul Carter, who always draws a crowd. And if the coach full of loyal regular visitors from Doncaster hadn't been held up in traffic we would have had to turn people away, as the Talks Room was already full to bursting! (They could at least catch the podcast by way of compensation). So this year we are trying something different, with a set of four short 'drop-in' sessions on popular research topics between 10am and noon, repeated between 2pm and 4pm.

Friday 22 February - Sunday 24 February Who Do You Think You Are? - Live

I'm really looking forward to this year's show. For the first time since 2009 The National Archives has an official presence. There won't be a stand, but there will be two talks each day in The National Archives Theatre. In addition to these, six more talks from staff (including me) are part of the main programme, and you will find full details in the full workshop timetable. I have no idea why these sessions are called 'workshops' because all the ones I have given or attended are what I would call talks or lectures (or classes, for Americans). In keeping with this year's migration theme, my talk is called 'There and back again - going away doesn't mean staying away' and is based in part on story from my own family which I wrote about in a blog post a couple of years ago.

For the rest of the time you can find us in a variety of places around the show; I will mostly be on the Findmypast and FamilySearch stands, or at the Society of Genealogists 'Ask the Experts' sessions on Friday and Saturday. You will be able to pick out staff from The National Archives by our distinctive polo shirts - I haven't seen them yet, but I am assured by the marketing department that they will be very tasteful. I'll be there all day on Sunday too, but on my own time, and in civilian clothes, so that I can get round and do all the things I won't have time for on Friday or Saturday.

Thursday 21 - Saturday 23 March Rootstech 2013

Another huge event, and by contrast with WDYTYA Live, I shall be attending in no official capacity whatever, but reverting to my habitual 'loose cannon' status. I attended the first two Rootstech conferences, and I wouldn't miss this one for anything. Although I'm not speaking at Rootstech, I have been asked to give a talk at the Family History Library on 'Lesser-known sources for births, marriages and deaths in the British Isles' on Wednesday 20 March. I'm hoping to get some research done there too both before and after Rootstech. I'm also looking forward to meeting up again with a number of friends that I haven't seen since Rootstech 2012 (and one of them is having a birthday party!).Should be a lot of fun. You can still register at the earlybird rate until 15 February, by following the link at the top of the page.

Saturday 27 April - Discovering the North West in The National Archives

This is another new departure, a day of talks by speakers from The National Archives at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. I shall be speaking about Civil Registration in 19th Century Lancashire, and my colleague Briony Paxman will be looking at education, but the star of the show will undoubtedly be the afore-mentioned Paul Carter, who starts off the proceedings with '...medical neglect of paupers in the North West 1834-1860' and ends the day with a joint presentation with Briony on criminal records and political reform. The cost of the day is £27 (less for concessions), including lunch. You can see the full programme and book a place through the UCLAN website.

Online records - never mind the description, look at the source

The great news for genealogists is that more and more records are being digitised, indexed and published online. Every few days, it seems, FamilySearch, or one of the major commercial websites announces the launch of a new collection of records, or a significant addition to an existing one. And then you can look at each site's master list or news archive for earlier releases for all the launches that you missed. There's a lot of stuff out there.

There is so much, in fact, that it is not easy to work out exactly what is available, and how complete any collection might be. Reasonably enough, you can start by looking at the description of a collection, but that isn't always very helpful. Sometimes a site fails to provide an adequate description, and in fairness, this may be because an accurate description would be so long that you would lose the will to live before you finished reading it - I defy anyone to give a decent account of FamilySearch's  'World Misc' collection, for example.

Newly-added collections tend to have better descriptions, but they still can't be absolutely accurate, for the reasons I have just given. Some of the most useful, and most popular, sets of records being added to sites like Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast.co.uk are the collections of digitised and indexed parish registers. They are usually classified by county, which is the most helpful kind of brief description, but you shouldn't take these at face value; don't assume that the newly-released collection of parish records for the (fictional) county of Borsetshire will include all records for all parishes and for all dates. A more  accurate description might be 'Baptism, marriage and burial registers for the ancient county of Borsetshire 1538-1925, except for those parishes in the Archdeaconry of Felpersham which are held in the Dean and Chapter Library there, the parish of Borchester whose records remain at the parish church, and the parishes of Penny Hassett and Waterly Cross which were transferred to the Metropolitan County of Shakespeareland following boundary changes in 1974'

See what I mean? Many online collections on Ancestry and Findmypast will make a lot more sense if you look at the record offices, because that's where the parish registers are held (and many more records besides). So each online collection will relate to a record office's holdings, which may or may not coincide with an actual county. The bottom line is, there is no substitute for knowing something of the history and geography of the place where your ancestors lived. For England you can find out where records are held for any parish using one of my favourite resources, England Jurisdictions 1851 or for anywhere in whole of the UK and Ireland there is GENUKI.

Ancestry has a number of collections whose descriptions give a good indication of what they contain, but which need closer attention. For example, the West Yorkshire collection consists of records from the West Yorkshire Archive Service, covering most of West Yorkshire but not all of it; the area round Sheffield and Doncaster has its own record office, and these records are not included. Its London Collection is from the holdings of the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), covering most of what is now Greater London - roughly the historic county of Middlesex with parts of Surrey, Kent and Essex. But this does not include the City of Westminster, which has its own separate record office, Westminster City Archives  (although the LMA holds some bishop's transcripts for Westminster parishes).

St James Piccadilly,
part of the Westminster Collection

The Westminster Collection itself is online at Findmypast. This collection includes lots of other material, mainly poor law records, but not school admission and discharge registers. These are held at the LMA, because they are part of the records of the London School Board. So you need to go back to Ancestry...

Other collections may be from printed, ie secondary, sources, or they might be incomplete for some reason. You will only know this if you take the time to read the source information. Different sites have different ways of providing this, but it is usually there. I am always grateful for any information that I find online, but unless I am confident about the source I treat it as a clue, not a fact.

It's easy to blame websites for making us lazy, and thinking we've done a comprehensive search by typing a name into a search box on a single site. But we shouldn't blame the internet for everything; before there were any genealogy websites some people thought they had searched a whole county's registers  by looking at the appropriate section of the IGI on fiche. And I'm sure that even longer ago some searchers used the many printed parish register volumes published by record societies and others, conveniently forgetting the less accessible registers that were still kept in parish churches. That's human nature, it's always tempting just to go for the low-hanging fruit.

Rootstech Day Two - no let-up in the pace

Another early start, with the FamilySearch VIP breakfast at 7:30. It helps if you are not facing the screen, which has a rolling slideshow of photos and biogs of all the attendees; it's a little disconcerting to glance up from your scrambled egg to see your own mug shot beaming inanely at you. It was, as usual, a very informal occasion, but there is a seating plan and place cards. I found myself sitting between Mike Hall, deputy chief genealogical officer with FamilySearch, whom I know quite well,  and Joyce Homan of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, whom I had not met before, who proved to be good company too. I was pleased to finally meet fellow blogger Janet Hovorka The Chart Chick of Family Chart Masters; we already have many mutual friends and I loved her 'Quick Insider's Guide to Salt Lake City'. Later I was introduced to Dennis Brimhall, new CEO of FamilySearch, who told me he will be visiting The National Archives at Kew in the near future.

The highlight of the day was the keynote address 'Exabyte Social Clouds and Other Monstrosities by Josh Coates, founder of MOZY, and you really had to be there, or at least watch the live-streamed version to appreciate what an event this was. He was funny, profound, thought-provoking - and barefoot. I did see him wearing shoes later, though. If you haven't already, catch it on the Rootstech site, you won't regret it. There is a good summary of the main points by The Ancestry Insider who understands this stuff better than most of us, and who helpfully explains the zombie in-joke.

Today was a key day for me, the day of our joint presentation on social networking, my geni-mates being Geniaus Jill Ball and We Tree Amy Coffin. I've already mentioned that our Canadian friend, Lorine McGinnis Schulze was unable to attend, but Jill, the driving force behind the whole thing, had left a slide showing Lorine's Olive Tree Genealogy Blog in the PowerPoint presentation, and Lorine herself was following the proceedings from afar, writing blog posts and commenting on Twitter. We had some nice messages of support beforehand (by various social media, of course), and it seemed to go quite well; several people said they liked it, no-one said they hated it, the room was pretty full and most people stayed to the end. and we had fun too. I call that a result. I promised to put some links and details of the example I quoted on a new page on this blog, and I will, but not just yet - one more day of frantic to get through first.

A personal highlight of the day was meeting my friends Martyn Killion and Heather Garnsey, from the Society of Australian Genealogists. I hadn't seen them for over ten years, so it was great to see them again. I'm looking forward to a proper catch-up over coffee before they fly home.

The NGS lunch was next, with a terrific double act from Josh Taylor and Barbara Rennick, looking at some (not all that) old technology - remember typewriters and mimeographs, writing letters and making calls on corded phones attached to a wall socket? Josh doesn't.

I attended the afternoon presentation on Google searching, and learnt some useful tips, but I was flagging a bit by then and had lot the ability to make coherent notes, so I'll have to catch up on that one later myself. After the Expo Hall closed I met up with some friends for an early dinner and rounded the day off watching the first episode of the new series of Who Do You Think You Are? featuring Martin Sheen. It was a good 'un too, with some particularly good revelations about the Spanish side of his family. I was surprised to find that he doesn't speak Spanish, though, considering his real name is Ramon Estevez. We were a small group, but we were Facebooking and tweeting with other groups watching elsewhere. There goes that social networking thing again.

It was late night at the Family History Library, just like last year, but I gave it a miss because I was pretty tired and my hotel is a good cab ride away from the Library. I still have Monday and Tuesday to get more research done. I even missed the anniversary edition of Geneabloggers Radio but I will catch the podcast later. Meanwhile, tireless ace reporter Geniaus was on hand and she posted a link to some great photos.

 

Great improvement at Familysearch

I couldn't have been in a better place to discover that FamilySearch had at last made the change I had been hoping for. I was in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, settling down to some Irish research, when I found that the British Isles category has been reinstated. I have written about this a great deal in the past, bemoaning, among other things, the fact that the British Isles categories in the left-hand list did not match the ones in the detailed list of resources 'United Kingdom' in one, 'Great Britain' in another, with a clearly imperfect understanding of the divisions within our collection of islands.

The site has now reverted to filters that more closely resemble the British Isles section of the old FamilySearch site. Well done FamilySearch, you listened to your users, including me! The categories are now:

Channel Islands
England
Ireland
Isle of Man
Scotland
United Kingdom
Wales

This is still not ideal, but it is a great improvement. The individual databases now reflect this list much more closely, and to be fair, some of the databases do not fit neatly into one of the main categories. If you click on the United Kingdom category, the three databases contained are all 'Great Britain', but these  are miscellaneous collections extracted from various sources, and at least Great Britain is part of the UK. The creation of a UK category as distinct from England, Scotland etc means that there is a home for any future databases that may be added in future; for example military or naval records that relate to the whole of the UK.

Some of the existing databases cover more than one place, the most obvious being the England and Wales censuses. But the Wales filter does include these within its results, which is another improvement - the Wales category was a bit of a mess before! It might be ungenerous to point out that the 'England and Wales census' databases also include the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, but does not appear in their filters. I'm sure that can be fixed.

It's a great way to start my stay in Salt Lake City. Now, if we could only get county filters too...

 

FamilySearch announce release of 100s of millions of Civil War records tomorrow

I'm not usually the sort of ace reporter who is the first to break news stories, I'm much too laid back and lazy for a start. But this one just fell into my lap, at Librarians Day, one of the pre-conference activities at the National Genealogical Society Conference in Charleston SC. I am typing this on my iPad, which doesn't support the Compose feature in Blogger, so it may look a little rough. I will tidy it up later.

FamilySearch have just announced the release tomorrow, 11 May 2011, of major Civil War service and pension records, both Confederate and Union. They will include the following:

Arizona, service records of Confederate soldiers of the civil war 1861-1863
Arkansas Confederate Pensions 1901-1929
Civl War pensions index
Louisiana Confederate pensions 1898-1950
Missouri Confederate pension applications and Soldiers' Home Admission Applications
South Carolina compiled service records of Confederate soldiers (NARA M267)
South Carolina probate 1671-1977
South Carolina probate records, files and loose papers, 1732-1964
United States 1890 census of Union veterans and widows
United States, index to General Correspondence of the Pension Office, 1889-1904
United States, Provost Marshall files of papers relating to two or more civilians, 1861-1866
US Civil War Soldiers Index 1855-1866
US Navy Widows' Certificates, 1861-1910 (NARA M1279)
US Registers of enlistments in the US Army, 1798-1914
US Veterans Administration pension payment cards 1907-1933
Vermont Enrolled Militia 1861-1867

I wouldn't have looked there!

Suppose that you had a British ancestor that you knew was born overseas. Where would you look for a record of the birth? Well, there are several places where you might find it, and you might even find more than one record of the same event. Or you might not find any record of it at all. It has never been compulsory to register vital events that take place abroad, although it may be advisable to do so. If someone was born abroad and later needed to produce evidence of their nationality, a proper birth certificate would come in very handy.

Now that so many records and indexes are online, you would try a few websites first. The indexes to the General Register Office miscellaneous overseas records are on Findmypast.co.uk and FamilyRelatives.com so you might start there. The indexes don't give much detail and you still have to spend £9.25 on a certificate, but it's a start. The other place you might think of is BMDregisters.co.uk which includes a number of overseas registers, the ones in The National Archives in record series RG32 to RG36. These come from a variety of original sources, and there is some overlap with the ones that are still held by the GRO.  It's a pay-per-view site, but it's still cheaper than a certificate; or you can access it as part of a subscription to The Genealogist.

If you know the country where your itinerant ancestor was born, you might look for a record in the registration system of the country concerned. There are lots of these on sites like Ancestry.com and WorldVitalRecords.com but of course you'd try FamilySearch.org first because it is free, and you might look on Cyndi's List to see if there are any other free online resources. But there are some births, marriages and deaths of the British overseas on FamilySearch that you could easily miss. The page above is from one of these registers; it is the register of births from the British consulate in Kansas City, Missouri 1902-1922. Most of the entries are indexed (not all, which is puzzling) but they are listed under 'Great Britain births and baptisms 1571-1971'. I expect this has happened because the records are held here, but it is misleading. I only discovered this by accident when I was a having a good rummage through FamilySearch, trying all kinds of searches. I have reported this to FamilySearch, using the Feedback button - there's a direct link to this page via the big button on the right-hand side of this page.

I don't think I've helped make anything any simpler - the more you look, the more complicated it gets. Keep searching!

ADDENDUM

Kirsty Wilkinson (The Professional Descendant) made a really useful comment below - you can click here for her link to the list of overseas Catholic registers on ScotlandsPeople.

New FamilySearch, a view from the British Isles Part Four - Ireland

Clonmacnoise    

A couple of days ago a helpful article on Irish Civil Registration appeared on the FamilySearch Indexing blog, and a further instalment is promised, with hints on how to use these collections. I shall look forward to that, but in the meantime I have been doing a little exploring of my own.

I was one of the indexers who seized on the opportunity to help get these indexes online, because they are an essential resource that was formerly all but inaccessible to most of the people who wanted to use it. So I am familiar with the records, and I understand their structure. I decided to do sample searches using a not-too-common Irish surname, Rowley. I selected the database 'Ireland, Civil Registration Indexes, 1845-1958', then Advanced search, and searched for the surname Rowley, with the 'exact match' ticked. It gave me 2124 results. The search boxes and drop-down menus are on the left, and one of the drop-downs is 'Event'. from this I selected Births, but the search still returned 2124 results, and the same thing happened when I selected 'marriages', 'deaths' or 'residence', all with the 'match all exactly' box ticked. Hmm. Something isn't working here.

Back to the birth search for a moment; the first of my 2124 results was for a birth in 1826 - nearly 40 years before the start of registration. It is, of course, a death where the age at death is recorded in the indexes, and the year of birth has been estimated from this. Scrolling through the results, the first 84 were of this kind, death entries with an estimated birth date, not actual birth registrations. The 85th result was for a death with no estimated birth year, and therefore by no stretch of the imagination what you would expect to get from a birth search. Oh dear. I narrowed the search to Thomas Rowley, and this returned 119 results; when I selected 'Births' from the drop-down menu, I still got 119 results; 26 deaths with estimated birth years, then 27 marriages, and finally 66 actual birth entries. So I was able to find out, eventually, how many Thomas Rowley births were registered in Ireland 1845-1958, but I had to click through the results a page at a time to get there, at 20 results a page. I'm glad it wasn't Patrick Murphy - there are 18089 of them. Changing the filter to marriage, death or residence made no difference whatever.

I tried a different kind of search, filtering by place. There are lots of Rowleys in Co Sligo, so I searched for the surname Rowley with 'Sligo' in the 'Place' box, both ticked for an exact match, and got four results, all from 1957 or 1958, four births from Sligo registration district, and a marriage in Tubbercurry district, which is in the county. When I repeated the search, but with the exact place search un-ticked, I got 1895 results from all over Ireland. It is not at all obvious how the non-exact place search works, because it filters out 229 hits from my original search, but still includes results from Dublin, Belfast and other places that are nowhere near Sligo. If I change the place filter to Tubbercurry, I get no results at all, whether ticked  for an exact search or not, not even the 1958 marriage. If I change it to Tobercurry, the more usual spelling, I get 50 hits for both kinds of search. I could go on, but I think this enough to show that these searches do not work properly, and I doubt if it the problem is confined to a single record set.

There is one more thing I want to highlight about the Irish records. The advanced search facility looks as though you can search for relatives, but with one exception, you can't. I know this, because I have seen the printed indexes from which they are constructed. The Civil Registration indexes are exactly that - indexes. You can select 'Spouse' from the 'Relationship' drop-down and put a surname in the 'Mother's maiden name box' and get results back, but only birth from the 1920s and later, when the mother's maiden name is in the indexes. You can select 'Spouse' from the relationship drop-down, but if you put anything at all in the boxes, you will get no results. This is because it is impossible to get this information from the Civil Registration indexes, they don't contain enough detail, so it is misleading to suggest that this search is feasible. Perhaps searches like this could be disabled where the database does not support them?

Countdown to Rootstech - two weeks to go.

I reserved my place at the Rootstech conference as soon as the booking opened. The event will take place in the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City 10-12 February. Frankly, I'd been looking for a good excuse to go back to Salt Lake City after my first visit in April last year, for the NGS conference. I want to have another crack at that library, for one thing. There are a few things I didn't quite have time for last time! But the main attraction is the Rootstech conference itself.

Rootstech is a new kind of conference, bringing together technology users and technology creators in the world of genealogy. I have been told that the conference is going to be very well-attended and will be very interesting to see how it turns out. One of the things that struck me at the NGS conference in April was the abundance of new technology, both in terms of hardware and software; in fact there was an entire technology hall in the exhibit area. At Rootstech the Expo Hall has the usual exhibitor booths, a Demo Area, a cyber cafe and some interesting new features - FamilySearch Digital Pipeline, Bloggers World and, most intriguing of all 'Rootstech Playground'!

Sixteen of the genealogy world's leading bloggers have been appointed Rootstech Official Bloggers and they will be blogging from the conference. Naturally, there will also be plenty of unofficial blogging going on, and a lot of tweeting, too. If you want to follow the proceedings on Twitter, the conference hashtag will be #Rootstech. The conference also has its own Facebook page. There is nothing quite like attending an event in person, but modern technology and social networking mean that it is possible to participate from a distance, or at least follow what is going on.

See you there - in person, or online.

New FamilySearch, a view from the British Isles Part Three

Great Seal of Queen Anne 1707, commemorating the Act of Union of England and Scotland

Since my last post on this subject, I have been taking another close look at the collections in new FamilySearch that were formerly categorised as 'British Isles'. The fundamental problem with these records is that the place filters simply do not work. Unless this is sorted out, it will be very difficult for anyone searching British Isles records - England, Scotland, Ireland (North and South), Channel Islands, Isle of Man, or United Kingdom - to find what they are looking for, or even to know what is there to be searched in the first place. Some of the issues I have raised relate to this region, the one that I know best, but could apply equally to others; you can't filter by US state or Canadian province, which is just as bad as not being able to filter by county within the British Isles. But the way that the records here have been categorised is unique.

These lists don't match!

On the home page, scroll down to 'Browse by location' and select 'Europe'. You will see a list of 'countries' on the left, and a list of record collections on the right, in country order. The list of the left corresponds with the list on the right - up to a point. The list of countries on the left reads: Austria, Belgium, Channel Islands, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France ...and so on. The record collections mirror this exactly as far as Denmark, then the next collections are not from Finland, but England, which does not appear at all in the left-hand list.

The list on the left continues...Germany, Gibraltar, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland...but the right-hand list has Germany, Gibraltar, Great Britain, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy...etc. More record collections, this time for 'Great Britain' which have no counterpart on the left. The two lists continue in step almost to the bottom, where the last four countries listed on the left are Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Wales. Now if you look to the right-hand list of record collections, there is only Switzerland, Ukraine and Wales, the 'United Kingdom' record having been distributed, inaccurately, between England and Great Britain.

This discrepancy between countries and record collections ONLY occurs in relation to the British Isles records, and nowhere else in the whole of the Historical Records collections.

Collections in the wrong place

I have already mentioned some of the anomalies in my earlier posts, New FamilySearch, a view from the British Isles Part One and Part Two. There is a filter for Wales, but it contains only Probate Abstracts 1773-1780; the major collections of Wales, Births and Baptisms, Wales, Marriages, and Wales, Deaths and Burials are found within the United Kingdom filter. Also within the United Kingdom are the Great Britain collections: Great Britain Births and Baptisms, Great Britain Marriages and Great Britain Deaths and Burials. I had looked at these before, and found that they included some Irish records - all of Ireland used to be part of the United Kingdom, and part of it still is, but it has NEVER been part of Great Britain. The Irish Sea is in the way! Great Britain is the geographical term for 'the other island' as one of my Irish friends calls it.

Further investigation shows that the baptism register of St Peter's, Athlone and Drum, Roscommon, is included in Great Britain Births and Baptisms, which contains the baptism register of the Immaculate Conception Chapel, South Orange, Essex New Jersey! I also found a number of entries there from the Irish Civil Registration indexes. Naturally, I have reported this using the Feedback facility.

Overseas Records

There are in fact many more records classified as 'Great Britain' which do not belong there. These are not records that have been mistakenly put in the wrong place by someone with an imperfect understanding of British geography. These come from substantial collections of records which are held in London, but whose whole point is that they record events that took place OUTSIDE the British Isles. These comprise many thousands of events recorded in British churches and chapels overseas, or registered with British consulates, embassies and legations abroad. The original records are held at The National Archives in either the Foreign Office or General Register Office collections, or in the Bishop of London's 'International Memoranda' at the London Metropolitan Archives. A further large  collection of births, marriages and deaths at sea, held at The National Archives, is also included in 'Great Britain' by FamilySearch.

These records are not just relevant to researchers with British Isles ancestry; they include people from all nations, particularly the 'At Sea' records which include many records of foreign nationals who were passengers or crew on British-registered ships. They may be included here because they are held in British archives, but records from the India Office Collection, held at the British Library, are correctly indexed by FamilySearch under India, so we know it can be done. Time to hit the Feedback button again...

Frustrated by new FamilySearch?

It's new, it's different, and it has some great new features BUT many of us are having great difficulty getting to grips with it. This is partly because it is unfamiliar, and partly because some of the features we want are not there yet, but have been promised - notably batch numbers, which are so useful on the old site. But much more problematic are those areas where the site simply does not work properly, or returns inconsistent search results, and so on.

Some people want none of it, and just want the old, familiar FamilySearch to remain untouched. Well that isn't going to happen, and nor should it. The old site is what we are used to but it is far from perfect, and couldn't cope with the quantity and range of records being added to the new site, let alone links to images.

So FamilySearch is changing, and there will never be a better chance to influence the eventual design of the site. I have written about this in previous posts here, and Rosemary Morgan gives a detailed account in her London Roots Research blog. We have both encouraged people to make use of the Feedback button visible on every page of new FamilySearch, and I think it is worth expanding on this a little.

When you click on the button, you have a choice of links, and the one you want is:

"Share your ideas Click here if you have a great idea on how to improve FamilySearch "

This doesn't take you to an ordinary feedback form, but to the FamilySearch Community page, a discussion forum. You can simply record your feedback as a new item, or you can look at what other people have already written and add your comment to theirs. You will need to sign in to contribute, creating an account if you don't aleady have one - it's very easy. You can even vote on what people's comments by clicking on a button 'I like this idea' The more people vote on a particular post, the more it gets noticed. So if someone has already made your point, it makes a lot of sense to add your vote to it, and add an extra comment if you wish. Some of the comments are along the lines of 'You have ruined this site, it's rubbish', which might be heartfelt, and letting off steam can make you feel better, but it's unlikely to achieve much. It's much better to be specific, and to describe exactly what you think needs to be changed, and why.

I recently wrote a blog post about my biggest problem with the new site, the unsatisfactory and inconsistent place filters for the British Isles. I had already raised this issue in the FamilySearch Community which got some attention. If you agree with what I said there, you can click on the 'I like this' button, and get some more attenttion for it (hint, hint). At the time of writing this post, only about 2500 people had registered any feedback at all in the Community. That's not many, considering how many people must use FamilySearch every day. So if you use FamilySearch, and want to influence the way it is going to develop in future, TELL THEM WHAT YOU THINK.

Like all bloggers, I appreciate comments on my posts, but in this case I'd far rather that you click on one of the feedback links above, and get busy in the FamilySearch Community. See you there  

FamilySearch - some useful tips

Back at the day job, one of the things I have to do is collate the feedback forms after the public talks that we have every Thursday. Yesterday's was the first one after the Christmas and New Year break, and we got off to a great start with 'What's happened to the FamilySearch website?' from Sharon Hintze, Director of Family History Centres (or Centers!) worldwide. In England we know her as director of the London centre, the only large FHC outside North America. She is always a popular speaker when she visits us  at The National Archives, and yesterday was no exception, with a full house and lots of positive comments on the feedback forms.

I was there to introduce the session, and I took a few notes too. Although I am already quite familiar with some of the features of the new site, I still learnt a lot. I'll try to pass on some of Sharon's tips, with the health warning that the site is still being developed so details may change from one day to the next. Although Sharon was in Britain, talking to a British audience, about British records, most of what she had to say also applies to the rest of the world.

The IGI as we know it has gone; it used to be a mixture of entries extracted from registers and 'patron submissions' but now the register material is part of Historical Records on the new site, while the patron submitted entries will be part of the new Family Trees section, along with the former Ancestral File and Pedigree Resource File. So far only the Ancestral File material has been loaded.

She showed us the new version of the Library Catalog, and I tried a few searches of my own afterwards to try it out. As you type a place name, it makes suggestions, which is a nice feature, but there are some areas where the old version still works better. For example, Brighton in Sussex used to be called Brighthelmstone, and if you search for Brighthelmstone in the old version the result is a hyperlink '(See) England, Sussex, Brighton; if you search for Brighthelmstone on the new site, it returns 'no records found'. There seem to be similar problems with other places that have alternative names, or alternative spellings. I am sure this will be sorted out in due course, but for the time being it is a good idea to check both sites.

When you get some results from the Catalog, one of the fields is 'Availability'. This will usually say 'Family History Centers', which means that the item is on microfilm and can be ordered through your nearest Family History Center for viewing there. Even a large one like the London Family History Centre only has a tiny fraction of the films in the catalogue in its permanent onsite collection. If the availability is 'Family History Library' this is likely to be a book, or some other item that cannot be copied, so you can only view it onsite in Salt Lake City.

Sharon gave us an overview and some explanation of the new site as a whole, with only limited time available to cover the business of searching the Historical Records collection, especially the British Isles records. I will report on what she had to say in a later post, but we hope to get her back later in the year to give us an entire talk on that subject, which is definitely one to look forward to.

New FamilySearch, a view from the British Isles Part Two

I have been having a closer look at New FamilySearch, with particular reference to the British Isles collections (even though the term 'British Isles' is no longer used as a place filter, see my earlier post on the subject). This time I have been looking at some of the collections themselves, and although these observations apply to specific collections in this region, the same kinds of features may well occur in records elsewhere.

I decided to look at the Scottish records, a very small collection compared with the inaccurately-defined 'United Kingdom' one.There are two record sets 'Scotland Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950' and 'Scotland, Marriages, 1561-1910' . The description of the first collection is rather vague

Index to selected Scotland births and baptisms. Only a few localities are included and the time period varies by locality. This collection contains 9,431,034 records. Due to privacy laws, recent records may not be displayed. The year range represents most of the records. A few records may be earlier or later.

You can scroll down the page for more information, or click on links that take you to the appropriate page in  the Research Wiki. There is a lot of useful information here, but it is all general rather than specific, and at no point is there list of the actual historical records that make up the collection. To be fair, the old FamilySearch did not provide this information eithe; the last time you could find such a list was in the Parish and Vital Records listing that came with the old microfiche editions of the IGI, and the last one of those was produced in 1992.

ADDENDUM: Chris Paton's comment below mentions the very helpful GENOOT site, so I have added the link here so that you can click on it instead of having to cut and paste. Cheers, Chris!

On the plus side, you can search the FHL catalog using the film number from any given entry and find details of the original source, which certainly was not always possible with the old FamilySearch. Furthermore, since the patron submissions from the IGI have been separated out, the source should now be an actual record that can be checked and evaluated. Or so I thought.

The date range 1564-1950 is very wide, and I guessed that the most recent entries would come from Civil Registration, known as the Statutory Registers in Scotland, so I did a search among the most recent entries to find out. This is another good feature of the new site, because you seem to be able to search on as many or as few fields as you wish, even a search on a date range of a single year, with no other fields filled in. Oe of the irritating features of the old site was getting a message  like 'You must enter at least a first or last name, or you must enter a father's full name and at least a mother's first name' 

A search in the range 1946-1950 returned 10 results, but only 4 of them were births from that period, the others were much earlier, but they included dates of DEATH that fell within the specified range. For the first time in my rummaging through new FamilySearch, I found that none of these entries included a film number, or any means of identifying the source. It may be that this information will be added later; I certainly hope so. But what I found more worrying was the fact that records containing death dates were in a collection called Births and Baptisms. The information shown is what you would expect to find on Scottish death certificates, except that the date and place of birth of the deceased do not appear in death entries during this period. So while these look like very informative records, I have no idea what I am searching.

I looked at the marriages next, and while the record descriptions were as vague as for the births and baptisms, there were film numbers that I could check in the FHL Catalog. I also discovered another advantage of new FamilySearch; it will return results from anywhere within the record being searched, which was not possible before. For example, a search for a man's name will not only return results for grooms of that name, but also where he is recorded as the father of the bride, which was an unexpected bonus. Not that this information appears in many Scottish marriage records before 1855, but it's wonderful when it does. Names of both parents of the bride and the groom appear from 1855 onwards, and marriages up to 1875 have been included in the IGI for many years, but only the brides' and grooms' names were included in the index. All the same, if post-1875 records are included later, or if the extra detail is ever added to the existing marriages, it's good to know that FamilySearch can cope with it.  It's nice to end on a positive note for a change.

I'll carry on exploring - and using the Feedback button of course - and report back again in a while

New FamilySearch; free talk at The National Archives (UK)

Back at the day job, we are kicking off the new year's programme of Thursday afternoon talks with a very timely offering What's happened to the FamilySearch website?  from Sharon Hintze, director of the London Family History Centre, on Thursday 13 January.

The talk is free, and there is no need to book, just turn up an pick up your free ticket in the Start Here zone. For anyone who can't get there, most of our talks appear on the website as podcasts in due course.

New FamilySearch, a view from the British Isles Part One

I don’t wish to be an old stick-in-the-mud, but when something new comes along, it isn’t always an improvement. Having said that, there are lots of good features in new FamilySearch, but sadly, there are quite a few flaws too. The optimist in me thinks that it should be possible to tweak and amend it so that more of the good features of old FamilySearch are re-introduced, or even improved on. We shall see.

There have been some very useful comments and observations from other bloggers; if you don’t already subscribe, I’d strongly recommend The Ancestry Insider as one of the best on this subject. I agree with much that has already been said, but I want to add some observations of my own from a British Isles perspective.

You will notice that I said British Isles, and not just ‘British’, and this is deliberate. Many people use the terms ‘British’ and ‘English’ interchangeably, but they are not the same, and it’s important to know the difference. It’s not just a question of courtesy to the Scots (most of me), the Irish (the rest of me), the Welsh, Manx and the Channel Islanders; if you are looking for records of your ancestors, it saves time if you look in the right country, it really does.

One of the most useful features of old FamilySearch is the way you can filter searches by place, and much of this has carried over to the new site BUT for this corner of the world it has become much worse.

Old FamilySearch

You need to select the IGI search page for this (you can only filter down to Country level from the All Resources page)

Region: British Isles

Country: England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Isle of Man or Channel Islands, or you can leave it at 'All countries'

County: you can select a county, or 'All counties' or 'county unknown', except for the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, which are very small to start with

New FamilySearch

Under Historical Records, 'Browse by location'

Region: Europe

Country: Channel Islands, Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland, United Kingdom, Wales (There is no collective British Isles category)

County: 'No further place filters found'

There are a number of obvious problems with this. First of all, there is no option called 'England', and no way to search all of the British Isles records at once, you have to search each one separately. If you look closely, the databases in 'United Kingdom' are mostly from England, but they include 'Wales Births and Baptisms.1541-1907', 'Wales Deaths and Burials 1586-1885' and 'Wales Marriages 1541-1900'. Wales has its own country category, but this only contains 'Wales Probate Abstracts 1771-1780'. If you then explore the actual databases listed within the 'United Kingdom' category, there are three (apart from the Welsh ones I have just described) that are not excplicitly English, these are the 'Great Britain' categories for Births and Baptisms, Marriages, and for Deaths and Burials. These, as you might expect, contain mostly events in England, but there are also a great many events which took place abroad or at sea - go to 'Great Britain Births and Baptisms 1571-1977', enter 'Florence' in the Place box and you will see what I mean. I have also found a number of Irish baptisms in the same category. Incidentally, 'Great Britain' is not the same as either 'England' or 'United Kingdom', and definitely does not include Ireland.

I will return to this subject again, but this is enough for now. I am still trying out the new site and there are features that I haven't explored properly yet. I have used the Feedback button to report my comments, and I do have some positive things to say about new FamilySearch too, but my first concern is with these place filters. FamilySearch as an organisation has been kind enough to sponsor me to speak at this year's NGS Conference in Charleston South Carolina in May; one of the sessions they have asked me to deliver is a favourite of mine called 'What is Britain?' It would be nice to think that some of the software engineers might pay attention to what I have to say.