Findmypast.co.uk has always had the most comprehensive England & Wales birth and marriage records – now we’ve added our exclusive additional records to create one simple search.

As well as England & Wales records, you can now search for your British ancestors’ births and marriages in our overseas, military and at sea records, some of which date back to 1761.

You won’t find a search this powerful including all these records anywhere else. It means that you can now find previously elusive births and marriages from a single search.

When you search for a birth record, one search will provide you with results from the following sets of records:

• England & Wales births 1837-2006
• British nationals born overseas 1818-2005
• British nationals born in the army 1761-2005
• British nationals born at sea 1854-1887

Below is an example of how your search results will look:

Note the wide variety of countries and places. Sort your results by country and place by clicking on each column heading.

We’ve given our marriage records the same treatment. Search once for your ancestors’ marriages in the following records:

• England & Wales marriages 1837-2005
• British nationals married overseas 1818-2005
• British nationals married in the army 1796-2005
• British nationals married at sea 1854-1908

We’re very close to completing our project to fully name index our death records. Once this is complete, we will combine all our death records into one search to finish the series.

Try our new search now to see how many ancestors you can find.

With the royal wedding almost upon us, we’ve been getting in the mood by exploring our marriage records.

When you search for your ancestors’ marriage records on findmypast.co.uk, we will actually match up their marriage records for you. We’ve chosen a royal wedding-themed example to demonstrate how this will benefit your family history research…

We searched for ‘Catherine Middleton’ marrying ‘William’ to see what our search returned. Note that we’re able to search for both spouses at once. Previously you had to search for both spouses separately then match up their records yourself.

Our first few search results look like this:

Looking in the ‘marriage matched’ column, the results with three green ticks show us the definite matches for Catherine Middleton marrying William. The results with one or two green ticks will display a list of all the people that Catherine might have married. This is a great way of solving those marriage mysteries - you can search using one partner’s name and we will show you all the possible people they could have married.

Now is the perfect time to search for your ancestors’ marriages. Try our free trial to access our marriage records for free for two weeks. Have you come across any royal-themed marriages in your family tree?

Searching for your ancestors’ overseas, at sea and army death records is now much easier on findmypast.co.uk

When you search these records, your results will now appear as a list of individual names.

Previously, your search results showed a list of pages and only displayed the first and last names that appeared on each page. You had to check through numerous pages to find your ancestors.

Now, you should be able to find who you’re looking for straight away in the list of individual names. It is well worth searching these records again for any ancestors you were previously unable to find.

This search improvement follows the recent launch of our enhanced overseas, at sea and army birth and marriage records search.

Try our new and improved search now:

• British overseas deaths 1818-2005
• British deaths at sea 1854-1890
• British armed forces deaths 1796-2005

The other benefits to you include:

• Search for your ancestors who died overseas 1818-2005 in one go, rather than searching twice for two separate date ranges
• Perform a more detailed search: search by region to narrow down your results more easily

Here is an example of a death at sea record:

Click to enlarge

The record shows some fascinating information about the circumstances surrounding these deaths. The cause of death for several of the people on this record is ‘drowned’ or ’supposed drowned’. For two men, Robert Waite and David Beynon, the record goes on to state: ‘vessel missing since’. Perhaps the most gruesome cause of death on this record is for Jane Atkinson, aged 33: ‘Inflammation of Bowels & Exhaustion caused by Sea Sickness’.

To be able to see in detail the cause of your ancestors’ deaths really adds colour to your family history.

This is the latest development in our project to fully name index all our birth, marriage and death records. The fully name indexed death records for England and Wales are coming very soon, marking the completion of this project.

Search these records now

How many ancestors will you find today?

We have drastically improved your experience of searching our overseas, at-sea and armed forces birth and marriage records.

We’ve given these records the same treatment as our England and Wales birth and marriage records, so finding your ancestors will now be much quicker and simpler.

When you search these records, your results will be in a list of individual names. Previously, your results showed a list of pages and the first and last names that appeared on each page. Now when you search, you should be able to spot your ancestors in the list straight away. We do always advise that you check the original image before ordering any certificates, however, to ensure that all the details are correct.

Included in this fantastic new search are the following records – click each link to find out more information and to search the records:

• British overseas births 1818-2005
• Births at sea 1854-1887
• British armed forces births 1761-2005
• British overseas marriages 1818-2005
• Marriages at sea 1854-1908
• British armed forces marriages 1796-2005

As well as being able to easily find your ancestors in a list of individual names, here are some of the other ways that the new search features will benefit you:

• You can now search for your ancestors who were born or married overseas across all years at once, rather than having to perform two separate searches for both date ranges
• MarriageFinder^TM will match up your ancestors marriages so you don’t have to – find out more about MarriageFinder^TM
• You can now perform a more detailed search. We’ve added extra searchable fields, such as region and mother’s maiden name, to make narrowing down your results much easier

This marks the latest stage in our project to make your birth, marriage and death records search as easy as possible. Our fully name indexed death records are coming soon and will make our birth, marriage and death records collection the easiest to search anywhere online.

Search these records now

The Federation of Family History Societies is carrying out a new and exciting transcription project to help trace missing ancestors, in partnership with findmypast.co.uk: the Lost Ancestors project.

The FFHS would like to invite family history societies and any family historians to help with this project. It involves indexing information from a collection of UK strays, kindly donated to the FFHS by Dennis Pearce and many other collectors.

A stray is someone who is described in a record as being from, or connected with, a place outside the area in which they normally lived or were born. Examples of strays include a girl who went into service then married many miles away from her parish, a soldier serving in the West Indies or in India, or one killed in action, a family awaiting removal from one parish back to their original birth place and many, many more interesting records that cover all dates to the present century.

This project could help to solve the problems of disappearing ancestors for so many family historians. This is a fantastic opportunity to produce a good financial boost for your family history society and provide high quality work for any family historians searching for that elusive family or ancestor.

To transcribe and index, the information will be placed online as excellent, clear images of each original card from the UK Strays collection. Using findmypast.co.uk’s specially adapted transcription tool, volunteers can type up the entries online no matter where they live. Full instructions and help are on hand to give assistance whenever needed - no experience is necessary.

If you would like to get involved in this valuable project and can volunteer a few hours, days or even weeks to help, please contact projects@ffhs.org.uk by 28 February 2011, giving a society name, your personal name, email address and telephone number (optional).

There’s more information on the FFHS website.

Last year was a fantastic year for findmypast.co.uk and we’d like to thank you for choosing to research your family tree with us.

Here’s a reminder of last year’s highlights and a preview of what’s in store for 2011 - it’s set to be a great year!

What’s planned for 2011 on findmypast.co.uk?

• As other websites start the lengthy process of making the 1911 census available, you can enjoy access right now to the full and complete 1841-1911 census collection on findmypast.co.uk. We’ll also be adding the 1841-1901 Scottish censuses to findmypast.co.uk this year to expand our collection even further
• Unbeatable birth, marriage and death records. Once we fully name index our death records, overseas BMDs and BMDs at sea (in the next month or so), you’ll benefit from the most comprehensive online BMDs resource available. No other website makes finding BMDs quicker and easier
• Millions more parish record updates, published in association with the Federation of Family History Societies. We will add thousands of new parish records to findmypast.co.uk every month - ours is the most extensive parish records collection anywhere online. Look out for 3 million new Derbyshire parish records coming soon
• We’ll make your searching easier: soon you’ll be able to effortlessly record your progress by saving records you’ve already viewed. We’re also making big improvements to our census searches
• We’re redesigning our family tree to include lots of fantastic new features
• We’ll launch exciting new records in association with The National Archives: Militia records, merchant seamen records and crime, courts and convicts records
• Our hugely anticipated project with The British Library continues: digitising up to 40 million historic pages from the national newspaper collection. This is the most significant mass digitisation of newspapers ever in the UK
• Welsh parish records from the Welsh archives which include images of original parish registers

Last year on findmypast.co.uk…

• Saw the launch of our fully name indexed birth and marriage records 1837-2005. Judging by the feedback we’ve received, this made finding your ancestors’ births and marriages much easier
• We introduced our new subscription package: the Foundation package. This provides you with access to the crucial building blocks that will take your tree back to the Victorian times and beyond
• Millions of new parish records were added, taking the total number of records in this growing collection to over 36 million
• We made the Chelsea Pensioners British Army Service Records 1760-1913 available online for the first time, in association with The National Archives. This collection comprises over a million military records and it’s typical to find eight pages of detailed information for each soldier
• Findmypast.com.au, our sister website, was born. Access to over 50 million family and local history records for Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands and Papua New Guinea, makes it the perfect place to find your Australasian ancestors
• We reached over 2,000 fans on our Facebook page. Following us on Facebook is a great way to hear about all the latest developments first and take part in our regular competitions

Looking after our customers is really important to us - that’s why every time you renew your subscription we’ll give you 20% off. You won’t find this amazing loyalty discount anywhere else.

A big thank you to everyone who has joined us on our journey so far - we hope you’re as excited as we are about everything that’s planned for this year.

Paul Yates
Head of findmypast.co.uk

Paul Yates

As you’re probably aware, one of the larger projects the findmypast.co.uk team has been working on this year is a complete revamp of our General Register Office (GRO) birth, marriage and death (BMD) indexes.

We’ve created a completely new, clearer set of images of the original records and we’ve also been working to transcribe each and every one of them for the very first time. This allows you to search directly for your ancestors, rather than having to browse several pages to find the person you are looking for.

Of course, some England & Wales BMD records are available elsewhere online, and some of them are even fully-indexed like our new ones, but to date, nobody else has provided a complete set of fully-indexed BMD records - another first for findmypast.co.uk, and a project which should be complete in early 2011 when we launch the death records. As always, our aim is to make your family history easier and this project is no different…

So, having launched the new birth records a few months ago, recently we’ve turned out attention to marriages.

Marriage search challenges

One of the main difficulties with searching marriages is the need to search for both spouses separately, and then compare the registration district, volume and page numbers to see if the two match up. Even worse, because more than one marriage is recorded on a single page of the GRO indexes, even if you manage to match up two potential partners, it is always possible that they actually married someone else on the same page of the index that you haven’t tracked down.

Another major challenge is finding wives when you do not know their maiden name. Often you will come across a new branch of your family in a census and identify a new husband and wife, listed under their married surname. Finding the husband in marriage records is generally possible, but without knowing the wife’s maiden name, tracking down the marriage can often be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Introducing MarriageMatch^TM

To help overcome these inherent difficulties, we’ve been developing a new search technology we call MarriageMatch^TM, which should make searching for marriages much easier, and should even help you unravel some mysteries in your tree.

MarriageMatch^TM does something very clever - rather than searching for one spouse in a marriage, it searches for both at the same time, and does the matching up for you. If you give the surnames of both spouses and they married after 1912, it will generally produce a list of exact matches - people with the surnames you are looking for who definitely got married to each other.

If they married before 1912, or if you only know the first name of one of the spouses, it will also show you all the potential matches on the GRO index page: in most cases you only have to choose between two (or occasionally four) people that your ancestor might have married. In any case, because it shows everybody on the same results page, you can be confident that one of the people on your results screen is the right one, and you don’t need to dig further.

Ian Tester, findmypast.co.uk's product manager

Where it really comes into its own is when you know the surname of the husband and just the first name of the wife - again, MarriageMatch^TM will find you all the records where, for example, a Thomas Smith married a Catherine. You can even use a variants search on either or both of the names if you are not 100% sure of the first name the wife may have been recorded under.

We have been testing it thoroughly at findmypast towers, and it has been incredibly valuable for us - it seems to have an uncanny ability to identify the marriage you are looking for from the millions of marriage records you might have been browsing for years, hoping to get lucky. I managed to crack five long-standing brick walls in my tree (husbands with common surnames marrying wives with common first names) in 20 minutes flat and we’re hoping you’ll find it just as useful.

We’re just doing some final tweaks to it now and will make it available on site in early December.

I’d really recommend that if you have any marriages that have left you baffled, you start digging them out now so you’re ready to see if MarriageMatch^TM really can solve some of those marriage mysteries…

We’ve had a range of suggestions from you on how we can improve our parish records search. The feature you asked for most was the ability to make choosing from the results easier by including the parish in search results as well as the county.

Hey presto - from next week (probably Wednesday morning), this feature will be available. Even better, we’ve removed advertising from all search results pages to give us more space to display your results meaning that they will be easier to read and will be able to contain more information. We hope this will make your research that tiny little bit easier!

Keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks for news of a major improvement to the site which we’re working on at the moment. Sorry to be a tease…but the wait will be worth it.

Hello,

My name is Ian Tester, and I’m the product manager at findmypast.co.uk. That means that it’s my job to try to invent new features on the site to make finding your ancestors easier and more satisfying. I’m also heavily involved in getting new records onto the site, and improving the search features we offer.

I started off in marketing at findmypast.co.uk a few years ago, but it wasn’t until I had spent a winter using findmypast heavily to start building my own family tree that I felt confident to move over into the product manager role.

Ian Tester - making pre-flight checks at home on his farm

I’ve worked on websites for 13 years, but you really can’t work on something as complex as findmypast or develop features for family historians until you have been at the coalface doing your own research and understanding what real family historians need. Perhaps the most important thing for me to learn was: a few years of my own research has left me with an awful lot to learn. This is where the experts come in.

I’ve now got my own (hard-won!) insights into family history research; however, I’m very lucky in that I have access to a lot of highly-skilled and smart people to help me out. The first group of people are my colleagues here in London and Dundee - they’ve got years of experience, many as professional genealogists, and they have unrivalled knowledge of family history records, research and research tools, so they’re always a valuable source of ideas, suggestions and improvements.

Because they’re using the site every day, their feedback tends to come thick and fast and one of my key tasks is stay on top of it all, capture it and make sure we follow up on all those small tweaks and improvements they suggest. In the nicest possible way, they can be quite demanding (which is good for our customers)!

The second group is unique to findmypast.co.uk - the groups of experts that we work with on a day-to-day basis. We’re constantly getting feedback from members of family history societies around the country (and beyond), the Guild of One Name Studies, the Society of Genealogists and of course, The National Archives, who have a dazzling display of subject experts on every set of records that you can imagine. Add to that the expert publishers we work with, such as the Naval and Military Press and Gould Genealogy in Australia and our partners at FamilySearch, and I’m able to tap a range of experts on any subject under the sun.

We often use our partners in the industry as ‘expert reviewers’ to gather early stage feedback, and to demonstrate early versions of new services to before we refine them and put them on the website. For example, when we launched the 1911 census last year, we spent months getting expert feedback from industry experts and made a huge number of changes to the way that the search and website worked before we went live.

Perhaps the most important group, however, are our customers, from whom I get feedback constantly. Key to this is our customer support team, who act as our ‘eyes and ears’ and understand better than anyone the issues or improvements that you suggest. I also attend family history events around the country and this one-to-one contact with customers provides some of the most useful ideas for what we need to do to make your research easier. Finally, we do a lot of market research with our customers, and it’s your generous and constant feedback that helps us decide what to do next and often how to make it work. I once tried to work out how many years of family history experience all our customers combined might have - but gave up when my calculator ran out of digits.

Enough of how we gather feedback - what am I actually working on at the moment and how is it going to make your research easier? Well, there are a number of projects that we’re actively developing features around at the moment. The most important is ‘improving your search’.

Improving your search is not only about adding new records to the site, but also revising the search facilities that we currently offer you and making sure that we make it as easy as possible to find your ancestors in the records.

We already transcribe more fields than other family history websites, meaning that our advanced search features let you search pretty much anything that is in the original record, but we could do better at making our searches cleverer (and, therefore, making you work less hard). For example, we spent a lot of time designing our new fully-indexed births 1837-2006 search to work with some of the idiosyncrasies of the records themselves. So, when the original indexes only record the initial of a second name of an ancestor, our search will intelligently spot that and find you the ‘Andrew P Smethwick’ recorded in the index for the ‘Andrew Peter Smethwick’ you entered into the search.

More cunningly, it will also find you the ‘Unnamed male Smethwick’ you might never have thought of searching for. If you include the mother’s maiden name in your search, it will even try to uncover scandal by finding possible illegitimate births (maybe an Andrew Peter Middleton).

I’m currently working on the fully-indexed marriages which will be on the site in the next few months, and trying to design ways to make this much easier. We’re designing something we’re calling ‘MarriageMatch’ at the moment, which will automatically hunt out and check both partners’ records and make sure that they match each other. These results will be marked as ‘MarriageMatches’ and put right at the top of your search results. This will save you having to look for both partners in a marriage and cross check the reference yourself.

We’re also designing a degree of flexibility into this search - again so it works with the idiosyncrasies of your ancestors and the records, so it will also look for variants in MarriageMatches and find these too. My great grandmother Gertrude Minnie Hardwick was somehow recorded as ‘Hardwicke’ on her marriage certificate. Our new search will still find her for you and match her up automatically with her husband’s marriage record, even though she was married before 1912, which was the first time a partner’s name was recorded in the General Register Office index.

So what’s the lesson in all this? Well, first, that searching records that you might find on other sites is not the same as searching on findmypast.co.uk. We’re aiming to make our new BMD search the best that you can find online. It will be complete and apply extra intelligence to your searches to help you find your ancestors faster and with a higher degree of confidence that you’ve found the right person. Second, that spending time to understand the records thoroughly before we design searches is key to making them work well. Third, that consulting our customers and industry experts gives us some of the best insights we can get into what makes searching records difficult and, therefore, ideas to make it easier.

After marriages, as in life, will come deaths, but I’m also working on incorporating ‘extra’ BMDs into the new BMD searches. Findmypast.co.uk already has the most complete set of GRO indexes 1837-2006 available online (we’ve been diligent at tracking down those missing pieces that other sites may not have got round to over the past seven years) but we’re also going to be adding BMDs at sea and BMDs overseas into the main BMD search in the coming months. They may help solve some of those mysterious missing events.

The new BMD search is just a small part of our ‘improving your search’ project and that project is just one of many that we’re working on to improve your experience on findmypast.co.uk. At the risk of sounding a tease, I’m going to save telling you about some of the other projects for another post. In the meantime, if you have any great ideas…there’s space for comments below.

Have you found Scottish ancestors in your family tree? If so, then the new version of the ScotlandsPeople website could hold the key to finding out more about your Scottish roots. The site has many new exciting and advanced features - read on for more information.

Tourism Minister Jim Mather officially launched the new ScotlandsPeople site on 7 September. In addition to all of the new features listed below, there are also new Catholic records, modern indexes to 2009, and a major indexing update of all current records on the site.

• Enhanced free surname search
• One character restrictions on wildcards
• Surname no longer required field in search forms
• Refine search button
• Saved search criteria
• Fuzzy searching, name variant and metaphone options for name fields
• Direct view image viewer
• Easy reporting of transcription and image issues
• Mapping of search results and images
• Advanced searching

Why not take a look today?

ScotlandsPeople centre - doors open day

On Saturday 25 September, the ScotlandsPeople centre will have free 20 minute taster sessions, talks about the records and a fantastic opportunity to walk through the centre to see the wonderful architecture and the archivist’s garden. For more information click here.

The National Archives of Scotland will be offering tours. For more information click here.

Check out the new ScotlandsPeople site today.