FreeBMD

Not a tip, but can we encourage people to submit corrections if they know of them. It's not very time consuming and it undoubtedly helps the site (and you get a nice acknowledgement). Quite often someone has made a best guess at a poor quality image, and your family knowledge allows you to realise the name is e.g Crask not Crase.

 

I find the 2 sites in combination are great at identifying the partners in marriage - FMP identifies possibilities for 'John Doe married Sarah Unknown' and FBMD tells you a surname for Sarah. (Always subject to further checking and confirmation, of course)

 

Hi all, my first posting, so hope I do it right

If you can't, at first try, get the seach result you were looking for, on FreeBMD, Ancestry etc, my tip would be not to forget to use "Phonetic search" or "Soundex" for surnames.
Over the years I have had many great results by useing this tool.

 

Thank you Tim, for the warm welcome, Its great to be on a nice friendly forum. I hope to be able to contribute more as my confidence grows

 

Tips on looking at Dates and Areas

I was looking for a marriage date between 1901 and 1906 for a couple who had their first child in 1906, I did find their marriage in 1915 !! This tought me to think "outside" of what I expected, and I now look at longer time scales if I can't find the result I was expecting.

Same as Areas of births, marriages and Death

Births ---the lady may have gone to her Mums (or other relatives) who may live in a different area, to have her baby, so baby would be registered in the birth area.

Marriages---especially the male partner--may have gone to his Brides area to marry. (In my case I was looking in Yorkshire but they married in Lancashire)

Death areas
The Death has to be registered where the person died, and in some cases this may not be the area where they lived (ie may have been working away from home, or been on holiday etc )

 

Regarding the place of death - you should also bear in mind the location of hospitals. It took me a while to recognise that the reason so many of my folk died in Southampton (about 15 miles from home) was that they were in the hospital there. And hospice locations are also relevant these days.

 

I find Free BMD's FreeReg really helpful. It has lots of parish register transcripts. To access go to the Free BMD site and in the welcome paragraph at the top it gives a link to FreeREG (parish registers).

 

One tip for searching for deaths on FreeBMD that I think many people don't know is that you can enter a date of birth range or age range. For example, if searching for the death of a John Smith born in 1845, you can type "@1840-1850" in the DoB box. Alternatively, you could type an age range such as "50-60".

FreeBMD have a page that discusses this and other search techniques: How best to Search FreeBMD.

 

My first tip, which actually applies to all search sites, is to read whatever "Help" page the site provides rather than dive straight in with a search (and yes, I tend to dive in too!). It can often offer some useful tips which might not otherwise be obvious. For FreeBMD you can find it from the top line of the Search page: To search FreeBMD enter the details of the search below. A fuller explanation of how to get the most out of your search is here

On FreeBMD itself, one of my top tips relates to searching for a death, not least when you have little certain idea when it might have occurred or how old the person was at death but where you know the approximate year of birth of the individual. Enter as much or as little of the person's names as you wish, and perhaps also choose a county or even Registration District. Then in the box labelled Death age/DOB, enter a smallish range of years - I usually enter +/- 2 or 3 years of any believed year of birth. And for the years to be searched, start with the last definite year in which the person was alive and end with maybe 100 years after their birth. This search will then yield only people of the right sort of age at death, which makes it a lot easier to sift through for potential candidates, especially if you have a suspicion of where they might have died.

My second tip relates to searching for children who were born and died between censuses and are therefore not recorded in a census, for example where you know from the 1911 census that a couple had more children than were alive at the time of the 1911. Search for deaths between (say) 1901 and 1911, but enter under Death age/DOB 1901-1911. This will then limit the results to people born between the census years; use other information such as a Registration District to narrow the options further. Having found potential candidates, you can then find their reciprocal birth records.

At this point my tip veers away from FreeBMD to the GRO certificate site but let me continue here. If you know the names of the father and/or mother, you can then apply to the GRO for a birth certificate in such a way as not to be charged (or rather, to be refunded in full) if the birth is not for your relative. Tick the box that says you don't have the registration reference. You can then enter the surname (only) of the child who you think is yours, together with the name of one or other or both parents, plus the year and place which you have found from your FreeBMD search. The GRO will then look over a 3 year period to see if there is a record which matches the details given. I have been able to rule out (without the expense of paying for a specific certificate) several possible births in this manner, and have also found the correct birth in a couple more. I have also similarly used it when looking for a marriage certificate (entering a date and the name of one of the marrying couple's fathers).

 

.... you can then find their reciprocal birth records....
If you select births and deaths in the type column you can match potential candidates without having to go back and forth.

 

Indeed you can, Bee, but if you do that you can't limit the search to people born between the 2 census dates and you will get results for a lot of "oldies" as well.