THE THREE C'S OF BRITISH RESEARCH:
CIVIL REGISTRATION, CENSUSES, AND CHURCH
RECORDS
©2013 by Donald R. Snow
Sections of the Class
Notes
- Welcome and What This Class Is All
About
- Civil Registration and FreeBMD
- Censuses
- Church Records - Parish Registers
- Conclusion
Return to the Utah
Valley Technology and Genealogy Group
Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page . This
page was last updated 2013-06-10.
WELCOME AND WHAT THIS
CLASS IS ALL ABOUT
- Instructors are Donald R. Snow (
snowd@math.byu.edu
) of Provo and St.
George, Utah and his daughter Linda
Snow Westover
(linda.westover@gmail.com ) of Orem,
Utah.
- These notes are posted on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
with all the links, so you don't
have to type them in yourself.
Hold down the Ctrl key when you
click on a link and the link opens
in another tab so you keep these
notes open where you were.
- This class is to describe the basic
databases of British family history
research, Civil Registration,
Censuses, and Church Records (Parish
Records). We will discuss each
type of record, how to search them,
and how to use these records together.
- More information on most of these
topics is in other sets of notes on
Don's class notes page http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
. Search for the term you want
by clicking on the CLICK HERE link at
the top of the class notes page.
CIVIL REGISTRATION AND FREEBMD
- Civil Registration started in
England and Wales in July 1837 due to
an act of Parliament to register all
births, marriage, and deaths with the
government. These vital events
were registered at local register
offices and then sent to the General
Register Office (GRO) in London 4
times a year. You can request
birth, marriage, and death
certificates through the GRO or
through the County Record
Offices. Churches also recorded
many of these same events, but that is
not civil registration. You can
learn more of the historical
background at https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Civil_Registration
.
- BMD (Birth, Marriage, and Death)
volumes
- Each county in England and Wales
kept BMD records and sent copies to
London yearly which were entered by
hand in large hardcopy volumes until
1984 when they were entered into a
computer system
- The hardcopy 1837-1983 BMD volumes
were available to the public
until 27 Oct 2007 when they were put
in storage at the National Archives
at Kew Gardens,
Richmond, Greater London --
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/
- Digitized
images are now available online
at several websites
- FreeBMD website -- http://www.freebmd.org.uk/
- FreeBMD is a volunteer effort
begun in 1998 to transcribe the
hardcopy BMD index volumes and
post the data online for free --
not made from original BMD, but
from the old index
volumes
- FreeBMD currently has more
than 229 million distinct
records (May 2013) and estimates
the entire transcribing project
will be completed by
September 2013 -- see http://www.freebmd.org.uk/FAQ.html
) -- That's this year!
- Searching FreeBMD -- see
search suggestions on
the FAQ's at
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/FAQ.html
- Select search
type: All
Types (of events),
or Births, or
Deaths, or Marriages
and options
- Enter as little
information as possible to
identify the individual and
only add more information
when you get too many hits
-- Reason is that search
terms even slightly
different from the way it
occurs in the database will
cause that hit to be missed
-- Can also narrow the
search by Exact Match or
Phonetic Search -- default
is non-exact on given names
and exact on surnames
- Results include Event (B, M,
or D), Quarter of the Year,
and several other items
- Event
date is by
quarter
only:
Mar Qtr (Jan,
Feb, or Mar),
Jun Qtr (Apr,
May, or Jun),
Sep Qtr (Jul,
Aug, or Sep),
Dec Qtr (Oct,
Nov, or Dec)
-- can record
these as
"Apr-Jun 1864"
-- Note:
events, especially births,
may be recorded in later
quarters than when the event
occurred.
- Reg District is a link and
clicking on it takes you to
information about that
Registration District -- Reg
Districts
usually include
many civil (and
ecclesiastical)
parishes --
See http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/districts/index.html
for
listing of all
Reg Districts in
England and
Wales
(1837-1974) and
what civil
parishes and
townships were
included in each
-- To find the
Registration
District of a
parish go to the
FamilySearch
Interative Map
at http://maps.familysearch.org/
- Page number is a link and
clicking on it gives you a
list of all event entries in
that Reg District on that
page in the index -- can use
this to
get the
spouse's name
in a marriage
since it shows
names of all
people
(usually less
than 6 or 8
people)
indexed on
that page as
married so one
of the
opposite sex
there must be
the spouse;
can use a
census or
other record
to determine
which one it
is
- INFO icon has information
about transcription of that
entry
- GLASSES icon opens
information and a button to
see the original image that
was transcribed
- Can
download the
search results
with all the
information or
else use a
screen capture
program
- VIEW IMAGES button has most
of the original index page
images from 1837 up through
1935, even those not yet
indexed
- FreeBMD does NOT include
the certificates nor all the
data on them -- can get the
exact date and more data by
ordering a certificate from
the General Record Office
(GRO), but that costs about
$14US; can order
certificates from the County
Record Office which is
usually cheaper -- see http://ukbmd.org.uk/
; can sometimes find exact
info from parish registers
and even the extracted
records in the old IGI
(International Genealogical
Index) which is now
available on Genealogies in
FamilySearch
CENSUSES
- Good
descriptions and links
at https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Census
and https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Census_Records_--_Finding_and_Using_the_Originals_and_Copies
- Censuses are surveys taken to
count the people; UK censuses
were every 10 years starting in
1801, but not by name until
1841, and are not made public
until after 100 years in UK, so
1911 UK census released in 2011
is latest available to public
- Censuses give a "snapshot" of
family, parents, children,
others living in household, and
occupations at the time; may
show relationships, other
children you didn't know about,
wife's maiden name, and may lead
to other records; censuses over
time show
migration of the
family
- UK census indexes and
forms online
- Indexes on
FamilySearch are
at https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list#page=1®ion=UNITED_KINGDOM_IRELAND&recordType=Census
or under Historical
Records at
http://www.familysearch.org
-- The
camera icon in front
means images are
available besides the
index, but you may not
be able to see them for
free without being in an
FHC.
- Indexes and images
complete on subscription
site findmypast.co.uk
, available for free at
FHC's on the FHC
Portal.
- Indexes, but not all
images, are on
subscription site ancestry.com
, available for free at
FHC's on the FHC Portal.
- Forms on http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/get_started/charts_forms.html
- Indexes and links
at http://www.censusfinder.com/england.htm
- A
helpful chart
of UK censuses
is at http://www.mit.edu/~dfm/genealogy/census-chart.html
- Can
save links to
censuses in
your Source
Box in Family
Tree, directly
if from
FamilySearch
and using Tree
Connect if
from elsewhere
- Censuses are useful to find
descendants from your ancestors
by finding children's names and
approximate birthdates, then
using FreeBMD to find who and
when they married, etc.
CHURCH RECORDS - PARISH REGISTERS
- There are many kinds of church
records, but we will only consider
Parish Registers and Bishop's
Transcripts here -- these are
chronological entries
of christening, marriage, and
death records and were started in
England in 1538 when the Church of
England split from the Catholic
Church; Bishop's Transcripts are
copies of the entries from the
parishes (congregations) each year and
sent to the Bishop and copied into
Bishop's Transcript books
- Reference book "Phillimore
Atlas and Index of Parish Registers"
by Cecil R. Humphery-Smith (latest
revision and publication 2010) is a
listing and maps of all parishes in
the UK, where the Parish Registers and
Bishop's Transcripts are now, and
which have been the filmed, etc. --
very helpful and is NOT online
anywhere, but much of that information
is now on the FamilySearch Wiki
- On FamilySearch the online and
indexed UK Parish Registers and
Bishop's Transcripts are found under
FamilySearch > Search > United
Kingdom and Ireland (at bottom of
page) > then filter on Birth,
Marriage, and Death or else go to the
list directly at https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list#page=1®ion=UNITED_KINGDOM_IRELAND&recordType=Vital
- Not all Parish Registers and
Bishop's Transcripts have been filmed
and many that have been filmed are not
indexed online yet; these are
all listed in the FamilySearch Catalog
under [location] > Church Records;
there may be indexes in book form
which have been filmed and will help
locate chronological entries until
FamilySearch Indexing does the
original register; also knowing
approximate dates and locations from
FreeBMD and/or censuses helps narrow
down the search in records not yet
indexed
- Many millions of names from early UK
Parish Registers were indexed
("extracted") and put into the old IGI
and those are now available on
FamilySearch under Records -- type in
"IGI" (without the quotes) to get to
the set -- The IGI is now in two sets
of records, (1) Community Contributed
and (2) Community Indexed. The
Community Indexed set contains the
extracted records and is searchable by
name and by batch number and helps in
finding families. See more
details about searching the IGI by
batch number in some of Don's other
class notes.
CONCLUSION
- Using these three databases back and
forth can solve many British research
questions in the time periods these
cover.
- Good description and links to
indexes and UK records at https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Church_Records
.
- This only scratches the surface of
using these databases and there are
many additional tips and tricks and
many tutorials online and in Don's
other class notes at http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
. We hope you have a better
understanding of how to use them.
Return to the Utah
Valley Technology and Genealogy
Group Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .