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[ This article is based on a presentation to the BIFHSGO Annual Conference of 2001, and published in Volume 8, Number 1 (Winter 2001) of Anglo-Celtic Roots ]

In recent years compact disk and Internet-based index information on British baptisms and marriages has become widely available. Burial information has remained difficult to access. The release of a 2 CD set, comprising 5.4 million index entries of burials in England and Wales, by the Federation of Family History Societies, makes a start toward remedying the situation.

Thanks to the work of many volunteers in county genealogical and family history societies, the National Burial Index (NBI) was issued in April 2001 by the Federation. It contains data from many of the counties of England and Wales, 4,440 places in total.

Coverage

The most complete coverage in the NBI is for Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, and Suffolk. Poorly represented are the West Country and South Coast, with Cornwall, Devon and Sussex having no entries. There is also no coverage for Nottinghamshire, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Rutland and several counties of Wales. Many of us are disappointed that London has only two registers included, and those for Catholic parishes.

The first CD in the two volume set is for the years 1538 to 1825, and the second for 1826 onward. For each year from 1717 to 1900 there are at least 10,000 index entries. The best chance of finding a burial is from 1814, with the introduction of George Roses's Act, to 1837, and the start of civil registration, where the CDs contain at least 50,000 entries for each year. 1837 has most entries, more than 83,000.

Using the NBI

Start the special NBI CD viewer, assuming it is already installed. If you have at least a little familiarity with such searches you'll find everything quite intuitive and will never need the instructions. The first screen that appears, after the opening screen showing a charming country church, is in spreadsheet format with columns titled: Burial Date, Forename, Surname, Age, County and Place/Details.

Click on the binoculars icon to initiate a search. The standard search form that appears allows you to enter last and first names, you don't have to enter both, and limit the search geographically, by year and religion. One of the names of interest to me is NORTHWOOD. I got 389 total hits on the two CDs, with 79 for the exact spelling and the rest for variants, mainly NORWOOD. My NORTHWOODs lived in the Birmingham area so I refined the search by specifying the exact spelling and limiting the county to Warwickshire. There were now only 19 entries. Clicking at the head of the Burial Date column sorts them in date order. It was immediately evident that the NORTHWOOD entries in Birmingham started in 1753, around the time the family first settled in Birmingham. Several of the entries appear to be family members in my database, but I'll need to check the parish records against these index entries.

The most innovative aspect of the National Burial Index is its mapping capability. Stephen Archer, who did the programming for the NBI, used some of the capabilities of his GenMap UK program in developing the mapping display. It's an excellent advertisement for his more comprehensive product. See more on this at: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/steve_archer/.

With the results of my NORTHWOOD search displayed, I selected one of the entries and clicked the England and Wales map icon. A map window opened showing the location of this parish with a red (dark) spot, and the location of other parishes found in the search with yellow (open) spots. The details for the entry selected are also shown to the right of the map. Clicking the box labelled "Display all NBI places" floods the map with white spots representing all the parishes in the database.

Displaying all NORTHWOOD hits I saw the burials concentrated in the Welsh border counties, Warwickshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire with outliers in Sussex and the East Riding of Yorkshire.

On the topic of outliers, even if your family names are not within the area or time period covered, searching is so easy that it can still be worthwhile searching your names to see if the NBI contains any strays.

You may get tempted to indulge your curiosity. Did you know that people name their children after months: January, February, March, etc.? My favourite is February: several months before the NBI appeared I came across a person with the unusual name of February BACKLOG, and was amazed to find his burial on the first of these CDs. Interestingly, there is nobody with the first name September, October, November or December. I wonder why? Do you know which days of the week people have named their children after?

The National Burial Index allows the user to easily export data in a variety of formats: Gedcom version 5.5 - a format designed for the interchange of genealogical information via different software packages; DBF - dBase III or IV format which can be used by many other programs, such as Access, Excel, etc., and; HTML -- which creates a file suitable for displaying on a web page or importing into a compatible word processing package.

With 5,417,480 records, the National Burial Index on CD-ROM is an essential resource. At £30 it is good value. Future releases with more data are planned. As of September 2001 there were already another one million burials waiting for the next CD in the series.

Avoiding Disappointment

People, particularly newbies, often get frustrated with the genealogy data CDs they buy. Searching the name of a UK ancestor on a CD dominated by people from the USA is a recipe for disappointment, or confusion if you find someone with the same name living at a different place and time. The disappointment is easy to avoid by ensuring you're searching the right country, and using a little arithmetic to manage expectations.

Between 1541 and 2000 I estimate there were 130 million deaths in England and Wales, so you have something like a 4% chance of finding any given burial in the NBI. That's odds of one in twenty-five. But its the rare person who's only interested in one ancestor. The more people you search for, the more you're likely to find. All else equal, you have a 50/50 chance of finding at least one of eighteen people, and a better than 98% chance of finding at least one out of 100.

Then again, all isn't equal. You improve your odds to one in four for deaths in the period 1813-1837. That's better than 50/50 odds of finding at least one burial in three, and even better if you know the burial was in a county with good coverage.

Of the 30 male NORTHWOODs in my database who died in England, I find four in the NBI. My rusty statistics tell me that with all things equal I'd have less than a 5% chance of finding as many as four out of 30. I was lucky. These ancestors were in an area of good coverage and died between 1782 and 1873.

OTHER UK Data CDs - LDS

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints blazed the trail in publishing genealogical index data on CD. Most anyone with an interest in British genealogy has used their version of the 1881 census, likely the CD version. It's a real bargain at $25.50US. For England and Wales it includes 26.3 million people. Scotland has an additional 3.7 million entries. One in seven people who lived in the UK since 1541 were alive in 1881 so its a "must search".

Have you tried and missed finding your relatives in the 1881 census? In many cases blame it on transcription problems - I find my Maria NORTHWOOD, by that time widow of Alfred DERBY, listed as DORBY. My MARMON great-grandparents show up as MARINON.

There are also people missed, as many as 10% by some estimates. Whole areas of counties are missing from the CD and microfiche, although they are present in the original. Some records are on the disks, but misplaced geographically.

Other people were missed by the census. Parts of cities may be absent being virtual no-go zones for the enumerators. I'm still looking for a great-grandmother, single in 1881, living in the East End of London.

Altogether, by one estimate, half the people in 1881 were either missed, or have some aspect of their information incorrectly recorded.

Another bargain priced LDS CD, at $6US, is the census for 1851 for Devon, Warwickshire and Norfolk. Done as a pilot project for the 1881 census, it contains a total of 1.5 million records, small but nonetheless valuable for those with ancestors in any of the three counties.

Finally in the LDS series is the British Vital Records Index (BVRI). Issued in 1998, it is the first in a series designed to include high quality extractions, and eliminate the distraction of often misleading patron submissions in the IGI. The 5CDs include 5 million records, some from Wales, Scotland and Ireland but mostly English. There is coverage of more than 100 communities in the counties of Dorset (155), Lancashire (136), Hertfordshire (125) Yorkshire (117) and Wiltshire (113). The CDs also contain extensive data from Suffolk Bishop's Transcripts (BTs) and the registers of Dr. William's Library, an attempt to register the children of nonconformist families, mainly in England and Wales, who dissented from the Established Church of England, including Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, and other sects who did not subscribe to the tenets of the Established Church. The BVRI is another bargain at $12US.  (A second edition of the BRVI was published in 2002 - Ed.)

 Other Data CDs

The number of CDs, and the number of organizations producing them, is exploding. Here is a brief survey of some of the most interesting.

County Family History Societies

The trend of putting their records on CD instead of, or as well as, in hardcopy or on microfiche, is now well established. Some examples include the Gloucestershire Family History Society selling their extraction of the county 1851 census in CD and fiche format. The Family History Society of Cheshire now offering five of an eventual twelve volumes of the 1851 census for the county. The Devon Family History Society offering Volume 1 of the Plymouth Marriage Index, over 200,000 names of brides and grooms taken from the post-1837 Plymouth Church of England marriage registers. The list goes on. To learn if there's something available for a county of interest to you visit the web pages of the county family history society, found starting from the GENUKI site at: www.genuki.org.uk

Archive CD Books (www.archivecdbooks.com/)

A company established in Gloucestershire that now boasts a catalogue of more than 300 CDs. (More than 900 as of September 2002 - Ed.)

Many are Pigot or Kelly county directories, some dating from before the census. Directories began in the late 1700s, were common in the 1800s, and continuing into the 1900s. These typically only mention businesses. BIFHSGO recently purchased the "1825 Pigot Directory of Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield" for the Library, and I was fortunate to find a NORTHWOOD ancestor listed in Birmingham.

BIFHSGO has also purchased, for £14, the Archive CD Books "Lancashire 1824/25 Baines Directory." It's both a gazetteer and trade directory containing an immense amount of information about towns and villages, their facilities, their history, and lists of all people in each who have trades. Even if your ancestor was an Ag Lab, and not likely to be listed, you may learn a lot about the village they lived in and their way of life from a directory.

S&N Genealogy Supplies (www.genealogy.demon.co.uk/)

This UK based company has started a major project to provide all UK Census data on CD and DVD. Starting with the 1891 Census of London, scheduled for release in September 2001, they plan to cover all census years from 1841 to 1891 but will likely exclude 1881. The CDs will not include a name index name, but will provide book marked images of the census allowing you to jump to areas and use PRO references, as well as the Street Indexes that are included. The disadvantage of not having a name index may be overcome through a volunteer project, and in the meantime there will be no question of present-day transcription errors.

Ancestry (www.ancestry.com)

This US-based company is now offering the "English Parish Records CD Collection," a total of 26 CDs for $800US. Also in various county or regional packages, they appear to be transcripts of parish and other records. To give a flavour, the volume "English Parish Records: Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk" includes: Suffolk: Great Whelentham - Parish Registers and History, 1557-1850; Norwich: Norwich Cathedral - Register of Marriages, 1697-1754; Suffolk: Sudbury - Marriage Licences, 1684-1754; Suffolk: Sudbury - Marriage Licences, 1755-1781; Suffolk: Sudbury - Marriage Licences, 1782-1814; Suffolk: Sudbury - Marriage Licences, 1815-1839; Suffolk: Ipswich - St. Nicholas Parish Registers, 1539-1710; Suffolk: Hollesley - Parish Registers; Norwich: - 1. Index to Wills, Consistory Court of Norwich, 1370-1550, 2. Wills among the Norwich Enrolled Deeds, 1286-1508; Norwich: - Index to Wills, Consistory Court of Norwich, 1550-1603; Essex, Hertfordshire: Chelmsford - Wills, 1400-1619; Essex, Hertfordshire: Chelmsford - Wills, 1620-1720; NRS A Miscellany comprising Baptisms recorded in the church book of the Old Meeting House Norwich 1657-1681; Baptisms and Deaths Recorded in the Church book of the Great Yarmouth Independent Church 1643-1705; The Account book of the "baptized" church in the City of Norwich 1726-1745. to the Norfolk Property of New College Oxford 1659-1675); Norfolk (England general): Yarmouth - Registers of Passengers (Great Yarmouth to Holland and New England), 1637-1639; Norfolk: Norwich - Minutes of Court of Mayoralty, 1632-1635; Norfolk: Norwich - Index of Wills, Consistory Court of Norwich, 1751-1818; Norfolk: - Census of the Poor, 1570; Nottinghamshire: - Norfolk Gaol Delivery Rolls, 1307-1316; Suffolk: Bury St. Edmonds - St. James Registers of Marriages, 1562-1800. That's less than half the contents of one CD. They are the kind of rare volumes you would find browsing the shelves at the Society of Genealogists. (There is a British version of the Ancestry site at www.ancestry.co.uk - Ed)

Quintin Publications (www.quintinpublications.com/cdengland.html)

This is another US-based publisher with a large international CD catalogue. The English material includes parish register transcripts and publications of the Camden, Harlein, Lincoln Records and Surtees Societies. It's worth browsing their online catalogue just to examine the obscure titles, now saved from cut-out limbo by digital technology. It also includes a large Canadian component of book and CDs, a result of the company owner having French-Canadian ancestry. Many company products are carried by Canadian vendor, Global Genealogy Supplies (www.globalgenealogy.com), useful for Canadians who want to avoid dealing with international transactions.

What's in Store

The explosion of genealogy data has been even more marked in the on-line world than on compact disk, and is probably the way of the future. That's easy to appreciate after an hour swapping CDs of the 1881 census. Why clutter your bookshelf with 25 CDs, the whole census, when what you want is the information for, at most, a few dozen people? Resources like the IGI (70 million records for England and Wales) and Free BMD (18 million records as of 6 September 2001) show what can be done. The 1901 census of England and Wales, going online in January 2002, will test a large-scale commercial model. Newly emerging are full text newspapers searcheable online. The CD, like the book, will continue to be attractive to family history societies and publishers, until they feel comfortable that online technology is sufficiently advanced to demonstrate its practical and economic superiority as a means of distribution.

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