Last night I watched Claire V Brisson-Banks' webinar on researching English ancestors and I really must take issue with something she said.
Claire stated that the BMD records on Ancestry which originate from FreeBMD are the Index Records from the COUNTY Record Offices. This is definitely not so: they are the GRO (General Register Office) Indexes. The Volume and Page references given are those for use when applying to the GRO for a Certificate. They are quite different to those in the County Indexes and will be of no use at all when applying for a Certificate to a County Record Office. Ancestry actually gives the following Source information: "FreeBMD. England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006. Original data: General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes. London, England: General Register Office." BMD Indexes for County Record Offices are not as widely available online as the GRO Indexes but more and more are gradually becoming available. See http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/ where you can read "There are two sets of Birth, Marriage and Death indexes in the UK; the original indexes held by the local register offices and a secondary index created by the General Register Office. The menu buttons on the left provide sets of links to web sites that contain both primary and secondary indexes. As always, you are recommended to look through the primary sources first, before looking through secondary records." There is also more useful information about Civil Registration in England and Wales. -- Jenny M Benson Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
