Registration districts and online searches

[WilliamPwllyfan]

I am getting deeply frustrated with Ancestry, FMP and even Family Search, bless them, because they don't seem to be able to cope with searches for parishes administratively in one county, but in an RD which covers several counties.

They only seem to think the RD is in one county (and it's not the one my parish is in!). The GRO is clear, an RD is an adminstrative device for registering BMDs, and not a declaration that one county has annexed parishes in another. For crying out loud, the certificates clearly say, e.g. Lampeter in the counties (plural) of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, or Pontardawe in the counties of Brecknockshire and Glamorgan, or even Newcastle-in-Emlyn in the counties of Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.

But the dear search engines of these sites can only see one county, so that if I'm searching for an event in, say, Llanfihangel Rhos-y-corn, it won't find the BMDs because the sites think Llanfihangel Rhos-y-corn is in Carmarthenshire (which, of course, it is) but won't look for the associated RD, which is Lampeter in the counties of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire.

Full listings of the RDs and their associated parishes counties are readily available, so why can't they be indexed properly on these websites?

Before I enter further frenzied paroxysms, I wonder if there's a way around this major frustration?

[Ken_R]

Two ways around it.
1. Use FreeBMD where you can select multiple Counties.
2. Having established the 'Volume' for the quarter in question at that RD, enter in the Volume field as opposed to a County.

[Peter Goodey]

As Ken suggests, FreeBMD has the better search facilities. FreeBMD struggles at peak times because it hasn't got the same computing power as Ancestry, say, but I always try it first.

The county field on FreeBMD implies other relevant counties. If I enter Derbyshire for a birth in Ilkeston, FreeBMD correctly finds a birth in the Basford RD (Nottinghamshire).

[Mitch in Notts]

And please note on Ancestry an awful lot of Registration Districts have been misplaced in the wrong county altogether .... which makes searching a BMD by county tricky in some instances.... Definitly look on FreeBMD if you can't find it elsewhere.