National Archives aids genealogy with new web birth, marriage & deaths service
A new partnership project between The National Archives and S&N Genealogy Supplies means that you can now access images of these records online. BMD Registers provides access to the non-parochial and nonconformist registers 1567-1840 held in RG 4 and RG 5.
Birth, marriage and death records are crucial tools for anyone
researching their family history. Before 1837, when civil registration
was introduced in England and Wales, church registers provided an
important source of information on births, baptisms, marriages and
burials.
The National Archives holds 5,000 registers of a huge variety of
nonconformist congregations, including Baptists, Methodists,
Presbyterians, Protestant Dissenters (known as 'Dr Williams Library')
and Independents. There are also registers from a small number of Roman
Catholic communities. Basic searching is free of charge, but there is a
fee for advanced searching and to download images.
The entries are rich in detail and may include material about up to
three generations of a family, helping you to add many branches to your
family trees.
As well as discovering details about your own family history, you can
also find records of famous names from the past, such as Mary Shelley
(Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin), Florence Nightingale and William Blake.
When the project is complete you will also be able to access further
miscellaneous birth, marriage and death records from the series RG 6-8,
RG 32-36 and BT 158-160. These include records of Quakers, of foreign
congregations in England and of clandestine marriages before 1754, as
well as miscellaneous foreign returns, and records of life events
occurring at sea.