Missing Records on FreeBMD

If you're trying to track down ancestors for your family tree you might spend quite a bit of time on FreeBMD.  FreeBMD is a great free website for family history - often being a starting point for where an ancestor might have lived. got married or died.  But, there are a lot of missing records on FreeBMD.

The FreeBMD project transcribes the records they have available - and are doing a sterling job, having already managed to input records well into the 1970s/1980s already.  But, you should bear in mind that there are gaps.

The trouble with records is that if you can find a record, you know it exists; if you can't find a record then you don't know if you're doing something wrong, or have the wrong information, so sometimes it can seem like you're treading through treacle.

It's not just regular people who have been missed off FreeBMD.  I often look for people who died in, say, national disasters - and find they are missing!  You'd have thought, say, that a record as recent as 1960, in a small/national disaster,would have existed.  I've just tried to find five deaths in one such large disaster and found none of them listed on FreeBMD.

So, use the tool that exists and accept that, sometimes, the record was simply not available to the transcribers.

FreeBMD Tips:

• Sometimes the full name isn't known - and only partial names, or just initials are input.  Search for these too.
• Don't assume you know the area an ancestor is to be found in, check other areas too.
• Tick the soundex box, which will give you names that sound the same/similar.
• Remember that people sometimes started using a different name, maybe their middle name, or a baptism of John always being referred to as Jack.  My own G-grandmother's registered death name omits her birth first name, she's still using her middle name but has invented her own first name - and she got married.

Image: FreeBMD