Debbie Kennett explains how to combine BMD data from FreeBMD and other websites
Birth, marriage and death records (BMDs) form the backbone of our research. Many websites provide access to the information in the General Register Office’s (GRO’s) civil indexes of BMDs for England and Wales, which began on 1 July 1837. However, the database at FreeBMD (freebmd.org.uk), which is being built by volunteers, is the best starting point because of its flexible searches, although the site’s coverage only runs from September 1837 to December 1997.
You can also download a comma-separated values (CSV) file of all the index entries for a particular surname. This data can be converted into a spreadsheet, and tidied up to provide a master index of all the occurrences of the surname. The spreadsheet can then be supplemented with additional information from other websites to fill in missing years, and to provide important extra details.
A master index is especially useful for a one-name study, but is valuable for any researcher. You can use it as a check list to make sure you don’t allocate the same birth or death to multiple people. It will also help you identify additional children when compiling family groups, and to track your progress. For common surnames, you can compile a spreadsheet focusing on specific counties or registration districts.
1 Search For Births Visit freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl. Select ‘Births’, type the name in the ‘Surname’ field, then choose ‘Sep 1837’ to ‘Dec 1997’ for the date range. Click ‘Find’. On the next page, click ‘Download’ to save a CSV file of the search results. The maximum number of results that can be displayed is 3,000, so with a common name you may need to run multiple narrowed searches.
2 Copy Birth Data To Excel Open the CSV file in a text editor such as Notepad, choose ‘Edit > Select all’ then ‘Edit > Copy’. Create a blank spreadsheet in Excel (or a similar program). Choose ‘Edit > Paste’. Remove extraneous information such as header information, and columns for events and flags. Adjust column widths and fonts as desired, then save. Give ‘Sheet1’ the new name ‘Births’.
3 Copy Marriages And Deaths Create two new tabs in your spreadsheet: ‘Marriages’ and ‘Deaths’. Return to FreeBMD and run searches for marriages and deaths rather than births, again pasting the edited CSV data into your spreadsheet. Add columns as desired, eg one named ‘Allocated’ where you can tick off entries that you’ve allo
