We’re very happy to announce that you can now search fully indexed birth records for 1837 to 2006 on findmypast.co.uk

Fully indexing the birth records involved rescanning 170 years of records and transcribing the quarter of a billion names within them. Over 1,000 people have worked on this two-year project.

These records are now the easiest to search complete birth records available anywhere online. The following are some of the benefits of the fully indexed birth records:

• Your search results will be in the form of a list of individual names, so you won’t have to check through pages of records to find your ancestors
• There is a complete 1837-2006 set of records
• The images of the index pages are completely new and very high quality
• We’ve added smart search features including name variants, and highlighting of unnamed children (very common in the Victorian period)
• There are clever search results to get around the quirks of the records, including the GRO’s procedure of initialising second names
• You can now search by mother’s and father’s name at the same time to help find those elusive births

If you haven’t had success finding an ancestor’s birth record previously, it’s definitely worth trying again using our fully indexed birth records - start searching them now.

Next on the list is a project to fully index the marriage and death records which we expect to complete by the end of the year.

As you may or may not know, 7 years ago findmypast was the first company in the world to put the England & Wales Birth, Marriage and Death records online. Astonishingly helpful as these records are in their current format, they can be hard to search as they are page-indexed rather than name-indexed, meaning that to find your ancestors, you have to check through pages of records and see if your ancestor is somewhere on the image.

But not for much longer. 2 years ago, we kicked off a project to digitise these records again from scratch and we are now close to releasing the first set of records - Births 1837-2006. Marriages and Deaths will follow later in the year. The project has been a huge investment, as it meant rescanning 170 years of records and then transcribing the quarter of a billion names within them. Over a thousand people have worked on the project to date. However, we hope that you’ll find the wait has been worth it.

Here’s what you will get:

• Completely new, high quality images of all the index pages
• The ability to search for a name and get straight to your ancestor, rather than trawling index pages
• A *complete* 1837-2006 set of records (you may find that there are gaps in some of our competitors’ versions…)
• Smart search features including name variants, and highlighting of unnamed children (very common in the Victorian period)
• Clever search results to get around the quirks of the records, including the GRO’s habit of initialising second names
• The ability to search by mother’s and father’s name at the same time to help find those elusive births

The Birth records will be the first release from this project and will be available in July - and our initial tests on record accuracy are extremely promising. Keep your eyes peeled for Marriages and Deaths, and also more new search features, and more BMD records being included within this project. Our aim remains not only to give you the most complete and accurate resources available, but also make them easier to search - we hope this major record release is a major step in that direction!

From 1 July 2010 we will be simplifying the pricing of our PayAsYouGo records. Currently there are over 10 different price bands for viewing records which can be quite confusing. From July we will have fewer price bands, grouped into multiples of 5 credits, for example, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30.

In most cases the changes will result in a slight increase in credit prices, in some instances there will be a reduction, and some records will stay the same (for example, 1911 census and passenger lists).

Viewing a birth, marriage or death (BMD) result will cost 5 credits instead of 1, but thanks to the full indexing of the BMDs (more information on this coming soon), overall a BMD search will cost you less, as you will need to view far fewer records to find the one you want.

This is the first time we've increased the prices of our records since we launched them, apart from the slight increase in credits to view 1841-1901 census records in April. Our PAYG credits are more flexible than our competitors' offerings. A subscription offers even more flexibility - view your options on our subscriptions page.

A full breakdown of the price change is included below.

First of all, apologies to all of of you who experienced a slow site during Saturday’s first England match: we were slightly overwhelmed by the response. But like the England team, we are now in hard training to make the second part a much more satisfying experience!

Although it’s great to hear that many of you found some nuggets during the free period, we’re working on a plan to make sure that everybody (especially our subscribers) get the normal, fast findmypast experience for the second match this Friday evening. And we’re also plotting ways to make sure that those based overseas don’t have to set their alarm clocks for strange hours to take part.

Keep an eye on this blog for more news, but if you haven’t registered yet, please do so now!

You can now search 97,515 records of men who were pensioned out of the British Army between 1873 and 1882 on findmypast.co.uk. We're working in association with The National Archives and in partnership with FamilySearch on this ongoing project. Here is a breakdown of the records you can find on the site and which are still to come:

Whereas many other military records provide information about officer-class soldiers, these records relate to ordinary, non-officer class soldiers. This makes it more likely that you will be able to find details about your ancestors. The connection with 'Chelsea Pensioners' is that the pensions were administered through The Royal Hospital at Chelsea. The great majority of pensioned soldiers were out-pensioners and did not reside at the Hospital itself.

What makes these records so special?

The records provide rich detail and colour to our ancestors' lives to a level that is difficult to find elsewhere. There are usually six or seven records per soldier, whereas an individual would only get one line in, say, a 19^th century census record. Most of the service records note all of the regiments in which a soldier served, with both start and end dates, ranks attained, and the total service rendered, again in years and days, in each rank and regiment. Service in either the East or West Indies is noted separately.

The reason for the soldier's discharge (illness or wounds) is given, as are remarks on general conduct while in the service, and notations on height, complexion, eye and hair colour, and civilian occupation. The form is dated and signed by both the soldier and commanding officer. In the absence of photographs, these records are an essential tool in providing an insight into what your ancestors actually looked like. These records are among the most popular at The National Archives as family historians and genealogists have realised how valuable they are. You can find more information about these records on our knowledge base page.

The Chelsea Pensioner Service Records are made up of servicemen from all over the British Empire. Below is a percentage break down of where the servicemen were born:

• England = 68.9%
• Ireland = 17.6%
• Scotland = 8.3%
• Wales = 2.2%
• West Indies = 0.6%
• India = 0.4%
• Sark = 0.00073%

Start searching for your Chelsea Pensioner ancestors now.

We have increased the amount of credits you will be charged to view an 1841-1901 census record from 3 to 5. This is the first time we’ve increased our credit pricing in 4 years and we hope you’ll understand our need to reflect the current market rates in our pricing. The 1881 census transcript images will remain free to view.

Findmypast.co.uk has complete census records 1841-1911 - more records than anyone else. We also have more searchable fields than anyone else which makes finding your ancestors as straightforward as possible.

PayAsYouGo credits can be a great way to start your family history research, but with a subscription you can enjoy unlimited usage of our records without having to worry about running out of credits. Visit our ‘Subscribe‘ page for more information about subscribing to findmypast.co.uk.

You can now find the complete records for Lavendon Village, Buckinghamshire, on the 1851 census.

There are a total of 795 records for Lavendon on the census for you to search. The Latter Day Saints provided the data for this update.

Search the 1851 census for your Buckinghamshire ancestors today.

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We have added a total of 204,501 new baptism and burial records for Wiltshire, Manchester and Dorset to findmypast.co.uk.

These records were provided by the Wiltshire Family History Society, the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society and the Dorset Family History Society.

See the table below for a breakdown of the records:

Visit our parish baptisms and parish burials pages to search these records.

We have just added 15,590 new parish baptism records for St John Wapping, provided by Docklands Ancestors. See the table below for a breakdown of the new records:

This means that you can now find 32,671 records for Wapping and a total of 423,148 records of baptisms for the London docklands area on our site. We will be adding plenty more new records in the coming months so make sure you keep visiting the site for updates.

Visit our help and advice page for more information on these records.

Get searching our parish baptisms to find your London docklands ancestor.

We’ve updated our site with new memorial inscriptions for Essex, provided by the Essex Society for Family History. The number of records has increased from 156,930 to 170,875. These records cover the years 1100 to 2007. Visit our parish burials page for more information.