In 2000 Cheshire's Registration Services became the first in the country to post their Birth, Marriage and Death records on the Internet.
Following Cheshire's lead, LancashireBMD is a joint project between the county's registration services and family history societies, to revolutionise public access to records dating back from the start of Queen Victoria's reign.
In the past, most enquiries for copy certificates have involved Registrars manually searching through hand-written indexes which refer to weighty copperplate ledgers. But now the indexes to an estimated four million births, marriages and deaths from 1837 to modern times are being made freely available to family historians throughout the world on the LancashireBMD web-site.
Researchers can make use of the site's user-friendly search techniques to identify the names they are looking for, and obtain reference numbers from which Registrars can supply the birth, marriage and death certificates.
The first phase of indexes appeared on the Internet in July 2000, but computerisation work by Registrars and dedicated volunteers from both family history societies has already been underway for some considerable time. The present site was launched in October 2000, and there is still much work to be done, but within a year of the launch over 1 million records were on-line, and the database is being constantly expanded and updated.
If you have any comments about these pages, or if you would like to know more about how to set up similar projects in your own area, please contact us via the contact information provided on the FAQ page.
