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?

Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.

From Helen Conway-Blake in Denmark:

‘I hope you can help. My husband’s mother was born around 1907. She died on 8 April 1951 and we have her death certificate, which says that she was 44 when she died.

Her name was Vera Nellie May Slater. When she died, she was married to William George Udall - they got married in 1939. Vera died at 31 Copse Hill, Wimbledon; we think this is a hospital. My husband was only 10 years old when she died and he never knew where she was buried.

Vera had two sisters. Peggy (probably Margaret) Slater and Sissy (we don’t know her real name). Sissy married a Lovegrove and they had a daughter. We don’t know if she is still alive.

We cannot find my husband’s mother’s family anywhere. We cannot find what town/city his mother was born in and can find nothing about her sisters or parents. If you can help us we would be most grateful.’

Stephen says:

‘Thanks for your enquiry. It’s hard to know what to suggest without knowing what you have tried already. The following suggestion is what I would do were I in your shoes, starting from scratch.

Firstly, if you do not have it already, you should purchase a copy of the 1939 marriage certificate. You can do this online at the General Register Office website. The statutory fee is £9.25 at present. The purpose of getting the marriage certificate is to a) find out Vera’s age at marriage in case this suggests a different year of birth to that calculated from the recorded age at death; b) find out the name of her father and his occupation; and c) see if any of the witnesses to the marriage are the known siblings or other family.

I have looked up the marriage entry in the marriage indexes on findmypast.co.uk and her name at marriage was Vera May Slater (without Nellie as a middle name). The only individual of this name of the right era in the birth indexes for England & Wales is one born in 1904 in West Ham registration district. This, however, may not be correct (the birth is earlier than you are expecting) and it is possible that she was born as plain Vera or plain May or even as ‘female’, i.e., unnamed at registration of birth. This is not unusual and is not simply synonymous with death in early infancy.

Once you have the certificate, and assuming that it names Vera’s father and confirms that she was born circa 1906/07 or otherwise before 1911, you should search the 1911 census of England & Wales. First, look for her in combination with her father using the advanced person search. If you cannot find her with him, then try looking for him alone using as base information a year of birth at least 16 years before Vera’s and his occupation as per the marriage certificate of Vera.

Should you find Vera on the 1911 census, which will give her place of birth, you can then search for her birth in the birth indexes for England & Wales (or elsewhere if the census suggests she was born outside England). From there you can proceed with systematic step-by-step research.

As mentioned above, I do not know what you have done to date. It is likely, however, that the negative outcome of all your searches suggests a perhaps less than straightforward family structure. Vera and her sisters may have been born under a different last name, for example, before their mother married a Mr Slater, i.e., he could be their step-father. This would be one possible explanation why you cannot find records under the name Slater. Or the two known sisters could be half-sisters with a different maiden last name. Or Mr Slater could have been the foster parent of the three girls. Or they could have been born in Scotland or elsewhere beyond England & Wales. So there are various permutations to consider. The best way forward in problematic cases like this will almost invariably be through the kind of methodical systematic approach sketched out earlier.’

If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!

As Valentine’s day approaches, we’ve made a fitting discovery in our marriage records.

We found the record of Valentine Pincemaille marrying Harry Hart in Windsor in 1914. This pairing would have given ‘Valentine Hart’ one of the most romantic names imaginable.

Here you can see their marriage record:

We found this loved-up couple in our fully name indexed marriage records. Have you found any romantic names in your family tree?

You can now search 2,145,957 new birth, marriage and death records for Derbyshire on findmypast.co.uk

This substantial release of new records will really benefit those with Derbyshire ancestors.

See the table below for more information about these records:

If you’ve previously been unable to find your Derbyshire ancestors, try searching these records again - there’s a good chance you’ll find who you’re looking for.

The Derbyshire Family History Society provided us with these records, in association with the Federation of Family History Societies.

Search these records now to find your Derbyshire ancestors.

Our military expert Paul Nixon, pictured below, answers your queries.

From Judy Cligman:

‘I am researching Richard Edwards who was married in Hoxton, London on 25 December 1915 and whose profession was given on the marriage certificate as Gunner RFA. I suspect that he was killed in the Great War. I have found two records of soldiers of that name from London in the list of soldiers who died in the war but don’t know whether either of them could be him.

Could either of these regiments be described as RFA?

One is William Richard Edward: L/CPL enlisted in the Royal Fusiliers (City of London regiment) at the Finsbury Barracks.

The other is Richard Edwards: Regiment Royal Welsh Fusiliers.

Richard Edwards’ father was given on the marriage cert as Edward Edwards Sapper RE.

I would be most grateful for any pointers you could give me on finding the military records of Richard and Edward Edwards.’

Paul says:

‘It’s unlikely to be either of the two men you mention but there appear to be three possibilities on Soldiers Died in The Great War for men of this name who died while serving with the Royal Horse and Field Artillery:

1. 78081 Gnr Richard John Edwards, R and E Neath; KiA 7 August 1916
2. 185151 Gnr Richard Edwards, R Seaham Harbour, Durham; E Sunderland; DoW 27 July 1916
3. 77935 Gnr Richard Edwards, B Preston, E Manchester; KiA 21 March 1918

B = born
R = residence
E = enlisted
DoW = died of wounds
KiA = killed in action

Of these, we can rule out no. 2 and no. 3 because the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records fathers with names other than Edward Edwards. That suggests, by default, that 78081 Richard John Edwards is your man, although I could find no trace of him on the CWGC website.

The marriage records on findmypast.co.uk, however, note that Richard Edwards (no middle name) married Elizabeth M Castleman at Hoxton in the December quarter of 1915. The absence of a middle name means we can also probably rule out Gunner Richard John Edwards as the candidate. Could it be perhaps that he didn’t die during WWI? It might also help to narrow down possibilities if you know where he was born.’

If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!

Following last week’s launch of our fantastic new marriage records search, MarriageFinder^TM, we’ve found some interesting names in our records. They just go to show that when taking a partner ‘for better or worse’, an embarrassing married name doesn’t put everyone off…

Here is a selection of the names we found in the records:

• Holly Oakes
• Eileen Dover
• Hazel Nut
• Queenie King
• Mona Lott
• Jean Pool
• Joy Rider
• Lily Pond
• Anita Bath
• Candy Barr
• Kerry Oakey

Keeping up with the Mary Christmases

It seems that a large number of Marys have continued the Christmas theme with their name and married someone with the festive surname, Christmas. There are over 50 Mary Christmases in our marriage records - the earliest recorded Mary Christmas married in 1837 in Alton, Hampshire, losing the maiden name of Cannon.

Where for art thou?

We’ve discovered a pair of real star-crossed lovers in the marriage records: in 1971, a Romeo married a Juliet in Lambeth, London. We also found the marriage records of Oscar Fingal Wilde and Constance Lloyd in Kensington, London in 1884, Jude Law and Sadie Frost in Westminster, London in 1997 and Kate Winslet and Jim Threapleton, in Reading, Berkshire in 1998.

With this record I thee wed

Our research found that the most popular county to get married in was Lancashire, with 11.66 million records listed between 1837 and 2005. London followed closely behind with 11.62 million.

The five most popular towns to be married in were:

1. Birmingham, Warwickshire: 1,656,516 records
2. Manchester, Lancashire: 1,127,584 records
3. Sheffield, Yorkshire: 988,541 records
4. Leeds, Yorkshire: 980,207 records
5. Bristol, Somerset: 899,885 records

Our marketing manager, Debra Chatfield (pictured), said:

“As the first company to publish birth, marriage and death records online, findmypast.co.uk has always been committed to making family history research more accessible. This brand new way of searching the marriage records is a major breakthrough in family history enabling people to find their ancestors’ marriages more quickly and easily than ever before by using our revolutionary new tool MarriageFinder^TM. Thanks to initiatives like this, family history is more popular than ever and we hope that we can help even more people to start uncovering their family’s past.”

Debra Chatfield, findmypast.co.uk's marketing manager

When you search our marriage records, MarriageFinder^TM will match up your ancestors’ records, providing you in many cases with one definite marriage match, or a list of possible matches.

The launch of these records represents the latest development in our project to fully name index our birth, marriage and death records. We launched the birth records in July 2010 and the death records will follow in early 2011.

Search our marriage records now to find your ancestors’ marriages.

You can now search fully name indexed marriage records on findmypast.co.uk

We have developed what we think is the easiest and fastest marriage search anywhere online. Use MarriageFinder^TM to find your ancestors’ marriages.

How does MarriageFinder^TM work?

MarriageFinder^TM is a very clever search facility which enables you to find a marriage by searching just once, not twice. Now, not only can you perform just one search, MarriageFinder^TM will actually match up your ancestors’ records, providing you with one definite marriage match, or a list of possible matches.

When you receive a definite spouse match, we will also provide you with the volume number and page number for both spouses’ records. These are essential when ordering marriage certificates.

Search across all years

Findmypast.co.uk is the only place you can search the 1837-2005 marriage records all in one go - you now do not need to enter a quarter and date range. To be able to search all years simultaneously is a major breakthrough in marriage searching, especially in cases when the marriage occurred earlier or later than you expected it to. Our vastly improved search will save you so much time and effort.

To demonstrate how powerful the search is, we searched for ‘John Smith’ with ‘Jane Jones’ as his spouse across all counties and years. Even with these extremely common names, MarriageFinder^TM found all the potential spouse combinations.

Solve those marriage mysteries

MarriageFinder^TM also means the end of mystery marriages. If you only know one partner’s name, search for their details and MarriageFinder^TM will find all the possible matches. You can then view a record to check it is your ancestor. Alternatively, if you know the first or last name of the spouse, enter this information in your search to get an even more accurate list of spouse matches.

MarriageFinder^TM makes it highly likely you will be able to find previously elusive marriages. If you have already searched for your ancestors’ marriages without success, try searching again – we are confident we can find your missing marriages.

If you haven’t already registered on findmypast.co.uk, try our 14 day free trial. This will give you free access to our Foundation package which includes these fantastic new marriage records. Sign up today to try out our amazing new marriage search.

Search our marriage records now

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 have just published 3,141 new Warwickshire parish marriage records for 6,282 individuals on findmypast.co.uk

These records cover the period 1539-2009 and they were provided by Pam Batstone and Mary Williams.

These new parish records are the latest in the series of parish records we’ve recently added to our collection.

Search for your Warwickshire ancestors in our parish records collection today.