civil registration, when an event was registered a certificate was given to the individual who registered the event and the information was kept on file. A summary register, or Index, of all the events was created allowing someone to order replacement or copies of certificates. As in books, the Indexes won't tell you everything, but will give you key information, such as names, dates (specifically, quarters) and places (the district the event occurred). How do I search BMD indexes? As with all records the most accurate way to discover your ancestors is to search a specific collection, rather than doing a general search. Go to the Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes page and then search in the relevant collection. If you're looking for births, marriages or deaths between 1837 and 1915 search the FreeBMD collections (these have been transcribed by FreeBMD). There are separate birth and marriage collections for the years 1916-2005, and for deaths between 1984 and 2005. Searching's easier with these records because they've been fully transcribed -- so you'll be given individual person matches to your search. For deaths between 1837 and 1983, we're still working on the transcriptions of these records, so your search will take you to an individual Index page, where you can then look for your ancestor's name yourself. By the end of the year you'll be able to search these records by individual too. What happens when I've found an ancestor in the BMD records? You can then order a certificate online