Genealogy Chat

I would be grateful for any advice on the best site for searching BMD Indexes. I already have access to Ancestry, so I can trawl through each quarter of each year. However, I really would like to be able to do a search on fully transcribed indexes, so that I find my exact entry, not just a list of pages that MAY contain my entry…. I’m mainly looking at post-1910 records, so FreeBMD is no good either. I thought BMDindex was transcribed, but now I’m not so sure and I also thought that familyrelatves was transcribed, but that seems to be off-air at the moment. Has anyone used either of these sites and can give me some advice please? Thanks for reading, Lesley

Lesley, familyrelatives is transcribed upto 1920 after that I am afraid you have to trawl quarter by quarter. Georgina.

Apart from Free BMD and the Ancestry version, which is effectively the same index, but presents differently, not that I am aware of. All the other indexes only hold the first / last names of each page. However there are various local area indexes produced by various societies so it is worth checking for these as well. Look at UK BMD, for example, as that may have the area you are interested in http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/

familyrelatives (when its working properly) is great for 1866-1920 - they are currently updating so you can name search 1837-1920. I usually look at freebmd first and if I cant find someone use the pay to view on familyrelatives. Its great if you have an unusual surname as you can enter just the surname, leave the whole country as your chosen area and the whole time span and bring up everyone with that surname born, married or died for very few units. One tip is only ever use one first name - if you enter more then it glitches and you can get a zilch return.

Thanks very much for all your comments and suggestions. The deaths I'm looking for are probably after 1920, so it looks like it's back to searching quarter by quarter then :-(