Genealogy Chat

Absolutely brilliant - had no idea and have been searching my family history for 4 years!
Many thanks
Andrea

For leaving a means of contact -- do check out gmail!

www.gmail.com

You can get an account that is completely anonymous. For instance, you could be

sue.familyhistory @ gmail . com

or not even use your first name or last name at all.

The account is on line, so you can access it from anywhere -- and it does not disclose your IP address when you send mail from it.

And even if you change ISPs and your 'real' email address changes, your gmail address will never change. (That's why it's a good idea to use one for your account here at GR, too -- if somebody finds a tree match with you 5 years from now, notice of a PM will still reach you at gmail, even if you've moved to the south pole.)

It also stores more stuff than you could ever collect -- you can exchange images and trees and just store them in your gmail account and never have to download them to your computer. They never get deleted from gmail.

So as long as your account name is anonymous, it is absolutely safe to leave a gmail address (or a hotmail address, if you're still using that) in a postem at FreeBMD or anywhere else.

i enjoy adding postems to my SMITH ancesters if only to eliminate them from the reasearch of other unfortunate Smith gatherers.

i will also add a postem directing people to other sites listing this person ie newspaper accounts, the old bailey, etc. every little bit helps.

more than one postem can be added to an entry. but once added they cannot be removed or amended. so be sure of your facts before you lead others astray!!!

Check out this entry for an example of a postem:

Marriages Mar 1880
Roch James Pembroke 11a 913

Click on the envelope symbol and the details of the marriage cert. are listed.

Rose

Freebmd is a free site where volunteers are adding transcriptions from the GRO index of births marriages and deaths.
It's a work in progress and near complete up to about early 1930s now.
Here is a link to read more.
To search, just click on SEARCH in the red box.

http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/

Gwyn

Please excuse my ignorance, I am completely new to this. What is a freeBMD entry?

Corrections done through a postem will not show up in freebmd searches.

If you check an image and find an entry mistranscribed, on the page that comes up when you click on the glasses (to view the image), click on "here" where it says "If you have a correction". The transcriber will then be contacted by freebmd and the entry corrected. You will get an email from freebmd when the correction has been done.

Thanks for that tip Portland Rose.
Just added a postem and spent some time having a browse

Blue

Happy to nudge this one - I'm always telling people with puzzles to stick postems at FreeBMD!

One thing to note -- no one can contact you through FreeBMD (the way they can through Ancestry).

And it's frustrating to read a postem and realize you might have found a rellie, and have no way of getting in touch (other than sticking up another postem and hoping they see it).

So -- get a gmail account

www.gmail.com

so that you're not exposing your 'real' email address (and possibly name and location) to everyone and their cousin on the internet, and include it in your postem so you can be contacted, if you are interested in finding family members.

Not sure if people realise this is an option, but you can add a postem to any FreeBMD entry.

You can add corrections and also add details of any certificates you have. If we all did this, we could save some money.

Just click on the read "Info" icon to the left of the entry and then click on "add a postem"

Rose