General Resources on the Internet

  • FreeBMD - A very useful and growing resource produced by volunteers who transcribed the indexes of the English and Welsh birth, marriage & death certificates. A long term project, the coverage is now very good and still growing (currently over 154 million unique records), although it can still be a bit patchy in places. It is now very useable for events from 1837 up to the late 1930s. Has sister sites at FreeCen and FreeReg, but these are still at an very early stage.
  • Ancestry (UK Version) - A paid-for subscription website with a vast amount of USA and UK (but limited Scottish) information. Provides images and indexes for the censuses 1841 - 1901, images and indexes of the England & Wales civil registration indexes from 1837, and ancestry is now expanding into parish registers, passenger lists and telephone directories. The UK only subscription is considerably cheaper than the global one.
  • Family Search - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) website which can be very good and has taken decades of hard work by them. It is international, but the UK is well - but not completely - covered. The best search to do is on the IGI (International Genealogical Index), which for the UK is a searchable index of mostly parish registers, the main source of information before the introduction of civil registration in 1837. Coverage of individual parishes can be ascertained by the use of The Phillimore Atlas & Index of Parish Registers (Cecil Humphery-Smith). On the website there are also a number of useful genealogical guides. However, it is unfortunate that over the years the quality of much of the information has been compromised by allowing the addition of unverified information by LDS members.
  • Cyndi's List - Cyndi Howell's impressive list of over a quarter of a million links to websites of genealogy interest! Regularly updated despite the size of the database.
  • RootsChat - A messaging forum for genealogists. It has built up into a great way of exchanging information between those with similar interests. It consists of a number of message boards relating to places, names, occupations etc and is free to use. Also has 'look up' boards where requests can be made for information from databases, and a very active photographic restoration section.
  • GENUKI - A very comprehensive site of information that includes Ireland and Scotland. It is very good for historical information about UK and Ireland counties and places.
  • British Genealogy - A website dedicated to British genealogy sponsored by Archive CD Books. There is a good selection of informative articles on the site and an active forum that covers mainly issues to do with the sponsor.
  • Genfair - An online shop of genealogical interest, which consists of a number of suppliers pages. Many family history societies now use this as their main online outlet for services.