PDA

View Full Version : In praise of FreeBMD Volunteers



Diane Grant-Salmon
07-08-2008, 5:56 PM
My Gt. Grandfather, Thomas Henry FORREST had a second marriage, which I knew nothing about until the release of the 1901 Census. I managed to trace living descendants from this marriage and I am very pleased about that.

My Grandfather, also called Thomas Henry FORREST, had two siblings, a brother (no problem there) and a sister, Mary Emma. She and my Grandfather were dumped onto their unmarried Uncle, when their father remarried. I tried to find out what became of Mary Emma, but I had no luck with FreeBMD, as the project was quite new in those days and to be honest, I forgot all about her after that. :o

I have just found a marriage on FreeBMD in 1903, with a choice of two partners, so I searched for any births after 1911, to see if I could find out which one of the two was her husband ..... what a laugh! :D

Births Jun 1917

McMillan Thomas H F Forrest S. Shields 10a 1471

What's the betting that he's called Thomas Henry Forrest McMILLAN? That's one of the certs which I must have, if only to prove that Mary Emma forgave her Father, as my Grandfather didn't ........ he never spoke of his parents to my Father. I assume his birth cert will give ALL his names?

MarkJ
07-08-2008, 6:07 PM
I am a huge fan of the FreeBMD volunteers myself :)
Not only are they working hard with the uploading of the information, but they will listen to you if you find a mistranscription.
Because of the way they work, they can only accept changes if the actual pages they work from show something other than what has been transcribed, but they work amazingly quickly to accept corrections. I reported a mistranscription last Saturday night (actually, it was about 4 minutes past midnight, so technically Sunday morning) and received an email Sunday evening to confirm that the details were to be sorted!

As you say Diane, in the early days, the data was quite limited, but now it is up to around 1929 in many areas! Every week seems to have new additions, so it is always worth checking those old records again!
A big thumbs up to the rest of the "Free" transcribers - FreeCen and FreeReg too for their work in helping to make researching less stressful for all!

Mark

Diane Grant-Salmon
16-08-2008, 3:49 PM
Success ...... two certs arrived today, but not the death cert for Stephen FORREST, just in case you read this, Mary (Elms).

Thomas Henry Forrest McMILLAN, not only the date of birth, but a full address, so I know where the family were in 1917. (Plus in 1903 from the marriage cert.) :)

Sandyhall
17-08-2008, 11:34 AM
Hi thanks for your praise one of the first things I did when I first started looking for my family years ago was to Transcribe for FreeBMD.
Its quite hard when you are told to transcribe what you see on the page, not what you know.

Sandy