Ever toiled through indexes of births, marriages and deaths, dreaming of a better way of finding your ancestors? 

Dreams can come true - and there’s a world-wide bunch of volunteers working on that better way right now. The FreeBMD project group is transcribing all the English and Welsh births, marriages and deaths indexes from 1837 to create a searchable database for the Internet.

Visitors to the FreeBMD site can already search over 61 million of the 100 million records up to 1899. Searches can target all of England and Wales or focus on specific districts, events and dates.

BUT - unless the project gets more volunteers, it could be years before the database is complete.

If you have a computer, with an Internet connection and can spare even half an hour a week, FreeBMD needs you! You don’t need to be a computer whizz or even a good typist - just accurate!

If you have your own fiche to work from, great; if not, you can work from scans or photocopies, copying details into the SpeedBMD database (easily downloaded from the FreeBMD site) which does most of the thinking for you.Working off line, you can often just press a single key to enter names and districts. When you’ve completed a page of records, you can either upload them to the database yourself, or email them to a co-ordinator who will do it for you. And, there’s a mailing list for extra support!

FreeBMD is also keen to hear from any one name studiers who have already copied births, marriages or deaths from the indexes, to include those in the database.

If you have such records to submit, please contact (email) FreeBMD. They can be found at  http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/ where you’ll also find joining  instructions. If you don’t have your own computer, but know someone who does, please encourage them to sign up. FreeBMD needs your help!