Free Family History Mini-Class : Lesson 7

Some of the first and most important genealogical sources you will use in tracing your family tree are birth, marriage, death, and census records.  You can search many of these online at no cost using websites compiled by various organisations, often by volunteers.

If you’re starting out in the British Isles, try using Free UK Genealogy or UK BMD for indexes to England & Wales civil registration, British census returns and parish records. Note that UK BMD provides more than one source for the England & Wales BMDs; their main web page explains this in more detail.

For birth, marriage and death records, both civil and religious, on the island of Ireland, you can search indexes and see free certificate images at Irish Genealogy.ie.  Some great tips on browsing these images are found on Shane Wilson’s blog. 

Perhaps your British ancestors worked or lived (or, indeed, died) abroad; if so, you may find their life events indexed at FamilyRelatives where there are military and consular records of births, marriages and deaths.  You will need to register with this site to carry out a search, but there is no charge for viewing the results or digitally imaged indexes in this category.

For many other countries as well as the UK and Ireland, FamilySearch’s indexes and images (both indexed and unindexed) are freely accessible.  You can search or browse civil registration/vital and census records, and video learning courses are provided to help you use them.  Creating a FamilySearch account is free and allows you unlimited access to all the website's resources - see this earlier post for a few of the things you can do.

Finally, if you’re trying to calculate someone’s birth date using their age on a census, here’s a handy chart to pinpoint the various dates on which censuses took place in the UK, Ireland, and the US.