20 Top English and Welsh Sites

Alan Stewart recommends 20 of the top sites for English and Welsh genealogy research.

If you have ancestors who came to North America from England or Wales, there are many websites you can turn to for help in tracing their roots. Census returns, for example, have been indexed for 1871 (partially), 1881, 1891 and 1901, and are accessible over the Internet. In addition, you can also view online the indexed images of wills dating from 1384 to 1858. Unfortunately, vital records and parish registers are not yet on the web, unlike those of Scotland.

You can, however, view images of the vital records indexes at several websites, and a fully searchable computer index is being prepared by volunteers. Some local indexes of vital records are also online, as are various parish register, census and monumental inscription indexes. Here is my choice of the most useful websites for English and Welsh research:

1. 1901 Census of England and Wales
www.1901census.national
archives.gov.uk
Since 1801, a census of the population of Britain has been taken every 10 years (except in 1941, because of WWII). Until 1841, however, names and addresses didn’t have to be recorded, although in some places they were anyway. You can view fully indexed images of the census returns for 1901 on the 1901 Census of England and Wales site, which is owned by the UK’s The National Archives (TNA). Searching the index is free, but there is a charge of 75 pence to view the digital image of an actual page of the census. It will cost you 50 pence for a transcription of one person’s entry in the census, and a further 50 pence will buy an additional transcription covering the remaining people in the same household. A credit-card session costs a minimum of £5 and lasts 48 hours, but vouchers to the value of £5, £10 or £50 last for six months from the date you first use them. In Canada, you can buy the vouchers from the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (www.bifhsgo.ca).

2. Ancestry.co.uk
www.ancestry.co.uk
Ancestry has already indexed and uploaded digital images of the whole of the 1891 census of England and Wales, and is in the process of doing the same for those carried out in 1871 and 1901. The 1901 census is accessible either on a pay-per-view basis from TNA or on subscription from Ancestry, where access to the UK and Ireland Collection will cost you $99.95 US or $139.95 Cdn. per year, or $39.95 US or $59.95 Cdn. per quarter. The Collection also includes the Pallot Index of marriages that took place between 1780 and 1837, mainly in London and the county of Middlesex.

3. FreeCEN
freecen.rootsweb.com
This is a volunteer project to index the 1841-91 censuses and make transcriptions available online free of charge at FreeCEN. At present, only a few English counties have been completed, including Cornwall for 1841 and 1891.

4. DocumentsOnline
www.documentsonline.nationalarchives.gov.uk

At DocumentsOnline, you can search free of charge in the index of over one million wills proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (covering the south of England and most of Wales) during the period 1384-1858. It’ll cost you £3.50 to view an image. In addition, a card index of campaign medals awarded during WWI is currently being digitized and made available on the same charging basis.

5. The National Archivist
www.nationalarchivist.com
This pay-per-view site contains indexes to digitized images of births, marriages and deaths at sea (1854-90), army lists, passport applications (1851-62 and 1874-1903), death duty registers (1796-1903) and some profession directories. Records are frequently added to the site.

Although searching the indexes is free of charge, you’ll have to pay to view the actual records. Charges range from £7 for 35 credits valid for 45 days to £50 for 360 credits valid for 75 days. Viewing a record costs between one and four credits.

6. LDS FamilySearch
www.familysearch.org
In 1553, baptisms, marriages and burials were ordered to be recorded in the approximately 11,000 English and Welsh churches, but a number of parishes didn’t start until much later. In some cases, although many early registers have been lost, the transcripts that were sent to bishops or archdeacons from 1598 have survived. The International Genealogical Index (IGI) on the website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can point you to entries in the English and Welsh parish registers from the 16th to 19th centuries. You can also search the 1881 census for England and Wales at this free website.

7. 1837online.com
www.1837online.com
On 1 July 1837 civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was introduced in England and Wales. This site provides pay-per-view access to on-screen images of the indexes to the vital records from 1837 to 1983. You can view fully computerized indexes to the records from 1984 onwards. To view index pages, you pay between £5 for 55 units valid for 45 days to £120 for 2,640 units valid for 365 days. Viewing a page costs one unit.

8. BMDIndex.co.uk
www.bmdindex.co.uk
A new competitor to 1837online.com, this site offers you subscription-based access to the English and Welsh birth, marriage and death indexes. The index of births is fully computerized from 1950 to 1983, as are all the indexes from 1984 onwards. A subscription for three months costs £5, and for a year £14.95.

9. FreeBMD
freebmd.rootsweb.com
This volunteer project (a sister to FreeCEN) is providing a fully searchable index to the English and Welsh births, marriages and deaths from 1837 to 1983. The index, which you can access free of charge, contains over 80 million entries. The site has also recently begun to compete with 1837online and BMDIndex by introducing free access to images of the birth, marriage and death indexes used by its volunteers.

10. UK BMD
www.ukbmd.org.uk
UK BMD is a portal leading to around 15 local indexes of births, marriages and deaths that have taken place in England and Wales since 1837. The indexes, which are not yet complete, have been uploaded by local register offices, beginning with Cheshire County Council’s in 2000. You can access most of the indexes free of charge.

11. The Genealogist
thegenealogist.sandn.net
The indexes to various censuses for a number of English counties (14 so far) are being uploaded to The Genealogist site by S&N Genealogy, publishers of the British Data Archive census data CDs. You can search the indexes on a subscription basis at this site, which is a sister site to the BMDIndex site.

12. English Origins
www.englishorigins.com
You can view various indexes provided by the Society of Genealogists, the UK’s oldest genealogical society, at English Origins on a pay-per-view basis.
These include Boyd’s Marriage Index, containing over six million entries for marriages that took place in England and Wales between 1538 and 1840.

13. FamilyHistoryOnline
www.familyhistoryonline.net
The pay-per-view website of FamilyHistoryOnline contains various databases compiled by local family history societies, including baptisms, marriages, burials, monumental inscriptions and census returns for most English counties and some of those in Wales.

14. National Archives Catalogue
www.catalogue.nationalarchives.gov.uk
At the National Archives site, you’ll find this free online index to documents held by the UK’s National Archives.
The index includes entries containing information on soldiers (but not officers) in the British Army who were discharged to pension between 1760 and 1913.

15. General Register Office [for England and Wales]
www.gro.gov.uk
At the General Register Office’s official site, you’ll find information on how to order certificates for English and Welsh births, marriages and deaths. The online ordering facility is expected to be extended to non-UK residents shortly.

16. Historical Directories
www.historicaldirectories.org
The University of Leicester has digitized and uploaded county and town directories dating from 1766 to 1919 for many of the counties of England and Wales. You can search these directories free of charge.

17. British History Online
www.british-history.ac.uk
Built by the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research and the Houses of Parliament Trust, British History Online contains the searchable text of several volumes of the Victoria County History series (including parts of Cambridgeshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, Middlesex, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire), as well as various other historical resources. Access is free of charge.

18. Proceedings of the Old Bailey
www.oldbaileyonline.org
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey site lets you search the accounts of over 50,000 trials held between 1674 and 1799 at the Central Criminal Court in London free of charge. The site is a joint project between the University of Sheffield’s Humanities Research Institute and the Higher Education Digitization Service at the University of Hertfordshire.

19. Access to Archives (A2A)
www.a2a.org.uk
Access to Archives, which bills itself as the English strand of the UK Archives Network, allows visitors to carry out a free online search of the catalogs of over 350 archives in England.

20. Federation of Family History Societies
www.ffhs.org.uk
At the site of the Federation of Family History Societies, you’ll find links to nearly 90 English and eight Welsh family history societies.
The federation is an umbrella organization for the societies in England and Wales, and also has many member societies in North America, Australia and New Zealand.

Alan Stewart is the author of Gathering the Clans: Tracing Scottish Ancestry on the Internet (Phillimore, 2004), available in North America from the David Brown Book Company (www.oxbowbooks.com).

This article originally appeared in the December 2004 issue of Family Chronicle.