Genealogy Chat

I agree Victoria - it's sooo difficult over here in Oz. Although the National Archives are useful.

Hi Paul and Sam, Thanks for your replies. I shall have to have a good look at the sites. the last site I mentioned....seems to be someone trying to free up various records in the uk ..... If your f/tree research is in America they seem to have lots of info available. But for those of us whose ancestors came from England and Scotland way there doesn't seem as much. It is a pity for people like myself living in Aust that we don't have some sort of universal site that we can join which would help us with all the various states in Aust. It can be very time consuming and frustrating trying to access records from another state. Many thanks Victoria

Hello Victoria, ukbdm has been running for about 18 months now, and recently underwent a major change brought about by the fact that the original host and server started to give major problems leading to people being unable to access the site. The host and server have now been changed, and it has improved matters immensely. The charge was introduced, after the matter was put to a vote, because of the costs of changing over. There were over 90,000 entries of BMD details on the site, but that number may have dropped as some people deleted their records after the charge was introduced. Work is ongoing to further improve the site and add new features to it. As has been said, 1837 is an excellent site radically improved recently by the introduction of a better search operation, and the inclusion of overseas and military records. It is not expensive in the same way as similar sites, but it is easy to use up credits if you have a wide time span to cover. It is best that you narrow it down as much as possible before looking for index entries. Regards Paul

Hi Victoria I have found 1837online to be virtually essential - once you know the year an event took place (or a close estimate), looking up the entry is very easy and gives you the GRO reference that you need to order the certifiacte. If you are searching for a birth after 1911, it also provides the mothers maiden name which gives you more info to go on. If you mean the ukbdm exchange site, it is fairly new so there it not a lot of information on it. People basically could leave details of any spare birth marriage or death certificates that they had so that others could use them if needed. It used to be free but theyt have just introduced a £5 p.a charge so I'm not sure I will use it now as the amount of info was very limited and I don't think it would be worth £5. I've never heard of the 3rd site that you mention but am going over to have a look now! Hope this helps! Sam

I got into this site. http://ukbdm.corpex.com. (www.uk.bdm.org.uk) I thought at first I was getting into the free bmd at rootsweb. It must just be starting up......is difficult to actually be able to search and use it. Has anyone any experience of this site? Also 1837 on line....... http://www.1837online.com/Trace2web/ Is that a good site? Seems to be reasonably priced....... Also http://www.free-our-records.com/ came across that too Seems to be quite a few genealogy sites about now....the ones that you pay for. I would like to hear your comments Victoria