FreeREG to be searchable "in the very near future"

The project manager of FreeREG, a parish register companion site to the hugely successful FreeBMD for civil registration and FreeCEN for censuses, reports that "testing is complete and was successful" and "we hope to go live with search in the very near future" with "over 1 million entries". The project is actively seeking volunteer transcribers. Update: On August 23, the project manager reported that "we now have 1,066,365 entries ready for when go live." On August 25, one of the county coordinators wrote that "we expect the FreeREG system to go operational within the next 4 weeks."

1.7 million new entries at FreeBMD

On Sunday FreeBMD added another 1.7 million entries. These quarters had more than 50,000 additions each:

• births in Mar 1851, Sep 1851, Dec 1853, Jun 1855, Sep 1855, Dec 1855, Mar 1869, and Jun 1869 and
• marriages in Dec 1876 and Sep 1915.

Another TNA podcast: British soldiers in India 1750-1914

Earlier this month I wrote about plans to podcast lectures given at The National Archives. TNA has since announced the availability of another lecture: Sahib, the British Soldier in India 1750-1914, by Richard Holmes, Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University. (See his BBC biography.) I still can't find any explanation of how to find these lectures other than by chance and perseverance. The two I've found so far are both in the directory www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/podcast/, but looking there directly just results in The directory you are trying to access does not allow the contents to be listed. Not helpful.

640k new records at Family History Online

Yesterday Family History Online added 640,000 new records. Existing databases for Derbyshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, and Yorkshire (Wakefield district) were updated. Entirely new databases were added for Cambridgeshire, Sussex (Billingshurst), Warwickshire, and Yorkshire (Leeds district).

Ancestry planning to expand into French and Spanish records?

MyFamily.com, parent company of Ancestry.com, appears to be planning an expansion into records from France and Spain (and/or francophone Canada and Mexico). Current job openings linked from their careers webpage include a Content Specialist - Spanish Records "proficient in family history research of Mexico, Spain, or other Spanish-language records" and a Content Specialist - French Records "proficient in family history research of French records in France and/or Canada".

More additions to FreeCEN

On July 13th FreeCEN added census data from

• Argyllshire, Dumfries-shire, Fife, Lanarkshire, Morayshire, Ross and Cromarty, and Sutherland in 1841;
• Inverness-shire in 1851;
• Cornwall, Devon, Hampshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Somerset, and Yorkshire in 1861;
• Carmarthenshire, Cornwall, Flintshire, Nairn, Scottish Shipping, and Wiltshire in 1871;
• Cornwall in 1881; and
• Cumberland, Lancashire, Lancashire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire in 1891.

This brings their database to a total of 7.9 million records.

British overseas BMD indexes online free

FamilyRelatives has added "100 million" records of British overseas births, marriages, and deaths. (Can it really be that many?) These are scanned images of the General Register Office indexes, not transcribed, searchable by index type, date range, and surname range. For example, you don't search for the birth of John SMITH in 1874. Instead you select "Search", then "Overseas", then "Births", then (for example) "GRO Consular Birth Indices", then "1871-1875", then "S", then "SKENE Ralph Rangabe - SMITH William Rait". And then, if you have the right viewer installed, you see an image of a handwritten index that includes volume and page references for SMITH John (registered at Constantinople) and SMITH John Salmon (registered at Alexandria). Yes, this is a clunky interface that could be (and should be) improved, but it's free, and it's not available free online anywhere else. (Update: The same data are available for a fee at 1837online.) Dick Eastman's EOGN blog has posted more information about these records from the FamilyRelatives newsletter. Three tips: (1) You have to register to use these indexes. On the FamilyRecords homepage there's a link to "Overseas Records", and links from that page to further information about each of the overseas BMD indexes. But this is only explanatory material. To actually search, you need to register and log in, and then a "Search" tab will miraculously appear. (2) From the Search tab, choose "Overseas", not "BMD", which would take you instead to the more familiar civil registration indexes for England and Wales. (3) Viewing the images requires the free DjVu browser plugin. If you don't have this, you won't get an error message, you just won't see any images. If that happens, click on the "Help" tab and choose "DJVU Plugin" for instructions.