Mothers maiden names search now permitted on LocalBMD site

From Ian Hartas of the UKBMD project, a notice regarding the LocalBMD section of the site (www.ukbmd.org.uk/local_bmd):

The various Local BMD websites have had another update to their software. The main visible difference is that instruction number 4 on the births search page has changed on the websites that have some data with mother's maiden names.

Instead of saying:
Enter a surname.

the new version says:
Enter either a surname, a mother's maiden name or both.

So, now you can search by mother's maiden name alone!

You may now leave the main surname field blank and enter just the mother's maiden name.

Also, to bring a bit more consistency to the search results the column order has changed so that the mother's maiden name column is now next to the other name columns, leaving all the reference columns in a group on the right. This also affects the layout of the option to output to a file.

Many thanks to Dafydd Hayes as usual for the Welsh translations of the various updated texts.

(With thanks to Ian)

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including A Beginner's Guide to British and Irish Genealogy, A Decade of Irish Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923, Discover Scottish Church Records (2nd edition), Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

Free online tutorials from UKBMD

From Ian Hartas of UKBMD:

Local BMD Project - Free Online Tutorials

Dear editors, tutors and others,
Over the years I've had the honour to talk at a variety of Family History Society and U3A group meetings on the subject of "BMDs on the Internet", offering an introduction and advice on how to get the best out of the various BMD websites that are part of the Local BMD Project. I've now split my talk up into a set of separate video tutorials which can be accessed, for free, via the UKBMD website.
Full details about the contents of these tutorials can be found on the Tutorials page.

Website links:

UKBMD website : http://www.UKBMD.org.uk
Links to the various Local BMD websites: http://www.UKBMD.org.uk/localbmd
Information about the Local BMD Project : http://www.UKBMD.org.uk/localbmdproject
The new tutorials page within the UKBMD website : http://www.UKBMD.org.uk/tutorials

(With thanks to Ian)

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including A Decade of Irish Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923, Discover Scottish Church Records (2nd edition), Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.

UKBMD's Local BMD Project seeks volunteers

From UKBMD:

The Local BMD project, which has been running for over 10 years, involves volunteers working with local Register Office staff to create online indexes of births, marriages and deaths from 1837.

The Local BMD indexes are more accurate than those held by the General Register Office (and others available online) because they are compiled from the original registers held locally and not from the quarterly returns that were submitted to the GRO by local register offices. Additionally, the Local BMD indexes identify where each event took place and may also include the mother’s maiden name for births, names of
both partners plus the name of the church or venue for marriages, and ages at death for deaths.

So far only a small proportion of the transcribing is complete, and the next phase of the Local BMD initiative is to seek help expanding all aspects of the project.

If you would like to know more about this project and how you can help, visit http://www.UKBMD.org.uk/localbmdproject

Links to all the current Local BMD websites can be found on the UKBMD website at http://www.UKBMD.org.uk/localbmd

Chris

Now available for UK research is the new second edition of the best selling Tracing Your Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians, whilst my new book British and Irish Newspapers is also now out. And please consider purchasing the great new version of Caledonia by The Libations at 79p via www.caledonia2014.com - all profits go to help fund Scottish foodbanks

UKMFH to concentrate on WW1 sites for 2014

I'm still trawling through several hundred emails received in the last three weeks - this is a press release from UKMFH (www.ukmfh.org.uk) received just over a week back:

UKMFH.org.uk concentrating on WW1 websites for 2014

Full website addresses : www.UKMFH.org.uk www.UKBMD.org.uk www.UKGDL.org.uk

These three websites have continued to grow since their respective launches. UKBMD.org.uk began first with just over 250 links to other websites - it now has over 2,400. Similarly UKGDL.org.uk and UKMFH.org.uk have also grown since their initial launches.

2014's 100 year anniversary of World War 1 has prompted a lot of interest in researching the many topics of WW1 on the Internet and so the team behind these three websites has been concentrating their efforts within UKMFH.org.uk into adding many more links to websites that have online information for WW1.

As with UKBMD.org.uk and UKGDL.org.uk , the website links within UKMFH.org.uk are all categorised by content and by county, but UKMFH.org.uk also has keywords.

On the UKMFH.org.uk menu the Category and County menu buttons will list links to websites relevant to your selection, but as the topic of Military Family History is so vast, it is often better to make use of the Keyword menu button. On the Keyword page the list of keywords is over 8,000 in length, so you have the option to refine the list by entering your interest. For example, enter Somme and click on the Refine the keywords button and the Keywords list will be reduced to those relevant to the various battles on the Somme. You can then select the keyword of specific interest and when you then click Search, the page that will be displayed will be links to all the sites that we know of relevant to this keyword topic.

Our aim with UKBMD.org.uk , UKGDL.org.uk and UKMFH.org.uk is that we do the searching so that the users do not have to. Many websites have useful information, but they do not appear at the top of Google's search results. We dig down past Google's (and other search engines) first page of results to find these websites and add links to them on the appropriate pages within our websites. In searching for WW1 related sites we are finding many sites with other military related themes and adding them too, so as always UKMFH.org.uk is not just for WW1 research.

So, we hope that as the interest in WW1 grows, UKMFH.org.uk can be of service to family historians researching their ancestors who played a part in the 1948-1918 war. It's free to use too!

(With thanks to Ian Hartas)

Chris

My latest book, Discover Scottish Civil Registration Records, is now available from http://www.gould.com.au (print) and http://www.gen-ebooks.com/unlock-the-past.html (ebook), whilst Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet is available at http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-History-on-the-Internet/p/3889/.

UKBMD - new parish registers category

The UKBMD website (www.ukbmd.org.uk) has had a bit of an update, with the addition of new categories. From Ian Hartas:

UKBMD has been updated to add new options on its menu

The very first version of the UKBMD web site simply provided a map of the UK and linked the counties to their respective Local BMD web sites if they had one.

This first version was soon replaced by one similar in style to the current version, with links to all sorts of other websites with on-line data for a wide range of categories.

However, we often still see many references to UKBMD which only mention Civil Registration. Selecting a county from the drop-down list in the menu will show a wide range of links to sites with more than just civil registration data. Two of the major categories are Census and Parish Register data.

To highlight this fact the menu on the left of the UKBMD pages has been enhanced to add another button for Parish Registers. Click on this button and all the sites that we know of with on-line parish register data will be listed. At the top of the list will be a drop-down list of counties which will allow you to refine the list to show only sites for a chosen county.

In a similar manner, the Census page has been enhanced also to allow you to refine the list based on a selected county.

(With thanks to Ian)

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

Cheshire and Yorkshire BMDs updated

From UKBMD (www.ukbmd.org.uk)  [This is an update to the message which previously only dealt with Cheshire]

Cheshire BMD (http://cheshirebmd.org.uk) has been updated as follows:

Births:
Replaced 4,995 for Runcorn, registers at Halton (1849-1859) to add mother's maiden name.

Deaths:
2,526 for Cheadle, registers at Stockport (1954-1962)
1,004 for Birkenhead, registers at Wirral (1929-1930)
2,505 for Tranmere, registers at Wirral (1926-1928).


Yorkshire BMD (http://yorkshirebmd.org.uk) has also been updated to add:

Births:
3,492 for Stanley, registers at Wakefield (1837-1851).

NB: These are for indexes compiled by local superintendent registrars, as opposed to those available from the GRO in Southport.

Chris

British GENES on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES and Twitter @chrismpaton

Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk and www.facebook.com/ScottishGenealogyResearch