STEER Family History

STEER Family History

Civil Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths in England & Wales
Transcriptions of the GRO BMD Indexes

This page gives information about civil registration and the transcriptions of the BMD indexes

The Transcribed Indexes

Births

Civil Registration Indexes and Certificates
How the BMD Indexes are being Transcribed for the STEER Project
What Surnames are Included
Current Progress and Plans
Where You Can Help
Viewing Transcribed Indexes by Date or Name
FreeBMD (also worth searching)

Transcribed Births Indexes
Registration of births was not compulsory until 1875. Births maybe registered in the quarter following the actual birth.
1830s A-Z 1840s A-Z	- 1840	- 1841	- 1842	- 1843	- 1844	- 1845	- 1846	1837 1847	1838 1848	1839 1849

Civil Registration Indexes and Certificates

The GRO Index transcriptions are an important part of the STEER Family History Project, confidence in the accuracy of this information is essential.

Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales commenced on 1^st July 1837 and was administered by regional Registration Districts. The registers are held in these districts or their successors.

Centralised indexes to the registers, for the whole of England and Wales, were compiled and it is the transcriptions of these that are available here, they commonly known as the General Register Office (GRO) BMD indexes. Up until 1984 the GRO indexes were organised into quarter years with the periods ending in March, June, September and December, and are often referred to as first, second, third or fourth quarters respectively. A common shorthand is to refer to an index as, say, 3Q1839, meaning third (September) quarter 1839.

Originally the GRO indexes contained sparse information: first names, surname, registration district, volume and page. The volume related to the registration district and each page would contain a handful of events, altogether the items in the index entry would be sufficient to identify the full entry of the event. The full entries can be purchased as certificates from the GRO or from local Register Offices but for the latter the GRO Vol / Page references are not meaningful. For more information about birth, marriage and death certificates and what information they contain please see http://www.dixons.clara.co.uk/Certificates/indexbd.htm.

The GRO indexes in the form of large books are held at the Family Records Centre (FRC) in London where they can be inspected. Many of the books are old and hand written but when they become worn are replaced by typed copies. The indexes do contain errors, fortunately not many, transcription of the hand written books into type has probably added to the mistakes. Microfiche and Microfilm copies of the indexes are available and have been purchased by a number of organisations world-wide.

How the BMD Indexes are being Transcribed for the STEER Project

The initial transcriptions are made from the index books at the FRC (see above section) or images of the indexes at the Society of Genealogists (SoG), they are then entered into a computer text file. The text file is read by a bespoke computer program into a database from which another program creates the web pages. The web pages were checked against images where these are unreadable and if not then against the original pages at the FRC.

In the transcriptions the names and surnames will always appear unaltered as will the GRO volume and page reference. However, the registration district is verified by the computer program. A registration district is matched against a known list and should also agree with the volume number. Registration districts are sometimes abbreviated in the indexes but usually it is easy to identify the correct full name. Sometimes a district is misspelled but the correct name can be inferred, in such cases a note will state that the entry has been amended and include the original spelling of the district. A significant problem is posed when the registration district and volume number disagree and either could be wrong. There is an actual example of this is in Dec 1837 where Chorley doesn't agree with a volume number XX, it should be XXI, however, there a district Chorlton which has a volume XX. The transcribed entries contain notes identifying such situations.

What Surnames are Included

The Birth Index transcriptions currently contain the entries for these variant spellings of the Steer name. Other names will be added when necessary.

STEAR
STEARE
STEARES
STEARS
STEER
STEERE
STEERES
STEERS

Marriage indexes will include the entries for spouses where these are known.

Current Progress and Plans

Currently births for the years 1837 to 1849 are available as web pages. More of the initial BMD index transcriptions are available but are still to be transcribed into computer text files. The process of reading the files into the database and creating the web pages is rapid, however, checking the results and correcting erroneous districts is time consuming.

The aim is to add birth index entries ten years at a time up to 1901 at roughly monthly intervals. Marriages for 1837 to 1851 should be avaiable during May. Deaths will probably follow after births and marriages have been completed. However, this might prove to be optimistic as the number of events per year can expect to increase through the 1800s.

The BMD Index transcriptions will be linked to corresponding details from birth, marriage and death certificates, where these have been obtained and contributed to the STEER Project.

Where You Can Help

There were over five thousand Steer, or variant, births registered between 1837 and 1900 and the aim is to identify the individuals. Ideally certificates would be obtained for all the indexed entries, however, cost alone excludes this. Anyone who has purchased certificates in the course of their family research is kindly requested to share the details so that collectively we benefit.

Each index entry is prefixed with a tick and if you recognise the person in the entry then clicking the tick will open an email which can be used to contribute what you know. You can also use the tick to enquire about a person, there is much more information in the database than published on this web site. The name of the person and their reference is automatically entered into the email message, this will clearly identify the person in which you are interested.

If you have a certificate then it is helpful to provide all the details from all the columns exactly as they were written, and including the district and sub-district.

Viewing the Transcribed Indexes by Date or Name

The transcriptions can be viewed by date or by first name.

The date links to the birth, marriage and death index transcriptions are by decades. The link for a decade will take you to the first quarter of the first year, further links on the linked pages will allow you to navigate to previous or subsequent quarters and years. The entries for each quarter are in first name order.

The name index is in first name order irrespective of any variation in the spelling of the Steer surname. Name indexes cover a decade of the GRO Indexes and the links can be found at the top of this page on the left, e.g. labelled as 1830s A-Z. .

FreeBMD

FreeBMD is a volunteer project to make the GRO indexes available on the web, it is worth visiting the FreeBMD site. The project is making good progress but is not due to be completed for a few years.

There are a few points worth bearing in mind when using FreeBMD. The long term project uses 'double keying' to correct transcription errors, double keying means that each page of the indexes is entered twice by separate individuals and the results compared. Discrepancies between the keyings are referred for adjudication. The project is proceeding at different rates for different indexes and years. Of the different entries that already appear on FreeBMD some will only be single keyed while others have been doubled keyed, the former being more prone to error.

Double keyed entries in FreeBMD are shown in bold type. At the time of writing (Apr 2004) there appears to be only one quarter year which has been double keyed for Steer entries, viz., June 1846, and one of the double keyed entries contains an erroneous page number. A page number is necessary when ordering a certificate from the GRO. Page numbers are the most error prone items in the FreeBMD entries and due almost entirely to the quality of the page images from which the transcriptions are being made. Single keyed entries contain a number of page number errors.

There are difficulties for the project in measuring progress and progress charts should be taken as indicative only. Examples are the database coverage charts showing the percentage of births, marriages and deaths held for each year. A figure of 100% complete for a year does not mean that all records are available for the year. It is usually easy to see where this affects Steer entries because there will be no entries for an entire quarter year (there is no known quarter year for births, marriages and deaths for which there are no Steer entries in the GRO indexes). Where a quarter year on FreeBMD shows some Steer entries then the quarter is likely to be complete save for any lack of double keying or other issues.