Genealogy Chat

thanks to both horatia and glen i'm going to give both these things a try in a bit. michelle

ok thanks i will give it a whirl. michelle

Hi Michelle, on ancestry,scroll to bottom of home page and under the large search box are options to search yhe english/ welsh bmd. Simply click on the 1837-1983 bmd index (beta). Beta means it is only on test at the moment,when you look at a name it will give you a district for the registration event (birth marriage or death) and a ref number. for example 7a 368. When you order the certificate quote the number,district,the year and the quarter. Each year is split into 4 quarters (suprise suprise),Jan-March, April- June,July-Sep and Oct-Dec,by quoting the number you save the £4.50 per certificate. If an event took place towards the end of a quarter it may not have been registered until the following quarter. So if you think a birth/marriage whatever took place in March also check the April-June quarter,if it occurs in December it may actually appear in the Jan-Mar quarter of the folowing year. You'll soon get the hang of it,just make sure you make a note of the numbers,then hopefully you can narrow down the number of certs you need to order to check for names etc. Glen

Put in the person's name and likely year of birth, death or marriage. The results show the names at the beginning of the page and at the end of the page, so from this you can estimate if your person's surname is likely to be on this page, if so, you just click on the image page and look for your person. There are plenty of navigation tools (back and forward arrows) to take you forward or back if you are just a page out. At the very top of the image viewing screen, you will see something like this: You are here: Search England & Wales, Birth Index: 1837-1983 (Beta) 1952 Jan-Feb-Mar K You can click into the part that says Jan-Feb-March (on the screen in question) and search through the whole of the K's for January February March if your page seems to be missing. Hope this helps. Cheers, Horatia

i looked on there but didn't have any luck (whether i'm looking in the wrong place i dont know). i even looked up mine and my mothers dates of birth just to test it and we dont appear on it either. michelle

Here is where you look for FREE BMD Lookups you can do for yourself: http://www.ancestr(y.c)o.uk/search/rectype/vital/freebmd/bmd.aspx (remove brackets) Cheers, Horatia

People can do their own FREE BMD lookups on Ancestry now. You don't have to be an Ancestry subscriber. This is the complete Birth Marriage and Death index 1837 - 1983 Cheers, Horatia

thanks how do you geta parents reference on here then? michelle

It will have his parents on it, yes. If you had asked on here for a reference lookup first, the certificate would only have cost you £7. Sam x

i could't find out what my grandfathers parents where called so i went onto the general register website which is; www(.)gro(.)gov(.)uk (remove brackets) and ordered my grandad's full birth certificate which cost me £11.50 but it should have his mothers and fathers name on it.