James & Kathryn's Home Page

Welcome to our home page. It's not much of a home page, just a collection of links to useful sites.

Introduction

We live together in a house in Marlow (Buckinghamshire, UK) with Chilli, our chinchilla.

Family Trees

We've been doing lots of research lately into our family trees. If we've sent you the username and password to our family trees, they can be found here:
James
Kathryn

• FreeBMD is a searchable index of registered births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales from 1837 onwards (they are up to about 1910, but with gaps in between). You can use this index to search for ancestors and find the Quarter, Registration District, Volume and Page of the general register they are on. This can enable you to send off for a certificate containing much more information (addresses, parents names, professions etc.). If you're not sure which registration district a place is in, then the index of places in England and Wales will help. FreeBMD also has a sister site (FreeReg) but it isn't live yet and doesn't appear to have been updated since April 2000. Its aim is (or was) to provide a central search facility for accurately transcribed parish records from 1538 to 1837.
• The General Register Office for England and Wales online ordering service allows you to send off for a certificate once you have the name(s), quarter, registration district, volume and page of the entry. It costs £7 per certificate (as of Oct 2003). They usually arrive a bit crumpled in the post, you would have thought the price would include a hard backed envelope with do not bend instructions.
• The 1901 Census Website allows you to download scanned images of the 1901 census having searched on name location etc. Searching is free and a limited amount of information can be obtained just be searching. It costs 75p (as of Oct 2003) to download an image (don't bother downloading transcriptions). If you pay be credit card the minimum session spend is £5 (a session lasts a day or so). A better bet is to buy a £5 voucher from your nearest retailer (mostly libraries) or on their website with a postage charge
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the mormons) are really into family history and provide a online census search which includes the 1881 British Census (England, Wales, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man). They also provide a search of the International Genealogical Index (IGI). This index includes transcriptions (sometimes inaccurate) of parish records in the UK and sections of people's family tree (extremely inaccurate). You may sometimes find some of your ancestors linked to the wrong people, or stated to be born in the wrong place.