10 MILLION REASONS TO VISIT FREEBMD by Dave Mayall [email protected] Details of 10 million English and Welsh births, marriages, and deaths are now available for free on the Internet. FreeBMD, the world's biggest family history project is celebrating having passed the 10 million milestone in its bid to transcribe the indexes of births, marriages and deaths between 1837 and 1900 and make them available in a free, easily searchable Internet database. The project is being carried out by a group of more than 1,550 volunteers worldwide and now gives anyone whose ancestor's birth, marriage, or death was listed between those dates a one in ten chance of finding the record. Searchers all over the world have praised the site, saying it has helped them find ancestors without spending hours trawling patiently through records; and every day a further 58,000 records are added. Searches can be made for all entries of a particular name or narrowed to include a certain range of years, type of event, or area or county. The database also includes a wildcard option so someone searching for a particular name can also find variants. Despite the celebrations, more volunteers are still needed to speed up the rate at which entries can be made available. The majority of the 10 million entries have been transcribed in about a year, which means that unless more volunteers are found, the project could take another 10 years to complete. Volunteers only need a computer with Internet access and some spare time, and the project is ideal for one-finger typists. Details of how to get the best from a search and how to volunteer are posted at the FreeBMD Web site at http://freebmd.rootsweb.com . FreeBMD acknowledges the generous assistance of RootsWeb and Ancestry, without which FreeBMD would not have been possible. [This article first appeared in the 20 April 2001 issue of FreeBMD News, and is reprinted with slight modifications by permission of the author. [email protected] ] Chrystie MYERS BROOKOVER, COWGER, KRABAL, MOYERS, MYRES, SWECKER --------------------------- # --------------------------- Rootsweb List Administrator - [email protected] Homestead for MYERS GENEALOGY.COM at: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~chrystiem/myersfam.html