As mentioned in a previous blog, we are currently working on updating our largest project FreeBMD. This is also our longest running project (as shown by the timeline below). The database has over 60,000 users per week and we want to make sure the completeness of the database and power of its search ability is maintained into the future.

To that end, this blog provides an overview of how the project to update FreeBMD is progressing. 

We are making good progress. To date we have almost completely finished the development of the 3 core pages: the Search page, the Results page and the Entry Information page. The Records section is in the process of being implemented to provide users with extra information about our data.

Almost everyone who uses FreeBMD wants to perform a search and get results. With FreeBMD2, we’ve improved the user journey, updating the look and usability of the search form so it’s more in line with FreeREG and FreeCEN. The results table has also been enhanced and the individual's information page is laid out for more efficient information retrieval.

The Records section provides information about the data we hold and it goes into more detail about districts, for example, the names that have been found and are available for each district.

The new version of FreeBMD will have a simplified help page to support people in using the new version if they feel they need it.

There will also be an About page so that users can find out more about us, and a Contact page so you can get in touch with the volunteer-led FreeBMD team.

FreeBMD2 will also be more accessible for people with disabilities: for example, blind people using screen readers.

We only have a small team working on this, so it has taken some time to get where we are today. The next few months will involve completing development and testing.

We want to have as many of the little teething problems ironed out and dealt with as possible - either fixed if something doesn’t work or smoothed out if something is getting in the way of people being able to use FreeBMD effectively. 

Once the testing of FreeBMD2 is done, and the feedback analysed and acted on if needed, we will be in a position to add in advertising for revenue generation. After the final testing stage we’ll be able to release it for public use.

As a volunteer-led charity, your donations and support have played a big part in helping us to reach this point. On behalf of everyone at FreeUKGEN and the wider genealogy community, thank you!

Our Big Give cause this year is the completion of the FreeBMD update. The donations we raise during the campaign this December will allow us to complete the work on this project and we hope to have the site ready for public use by the middle of next year.

We hope you will carry on supporting us in the final stretch to complete the modernisation process for our three well-loved genealogy websites.

Happy researchers sometimes contact us to share the good news of their finds using Free UK Genealogy websites. Some have even found links to royalty or British aristocracy which confirm family ‘tales’ which were passed down through the generations.

Rhys Southern, who lives in Australia, got in touch recently, having made such a find, and expressed how useful FreeCEN had been for census records. He wrote: “We have been researching our family history for more than 50 years. Recently I started doing some online research with my father, and we discovered a very interesting past, with my direct ancestors being the baronets of Harewood in the UK.”

The Hoskyns Baronetcy, of Harewood in the County of Hereford, is a title in the Baronetage of England, which was created in 1676 for Bennet Hoskyns, then MP for Wendover, Hereford and Herefordshire. 

The Hoskyns Crest

Rhys asked if we would like to share his story – and we think it’s a great example of what can be discovered with good quality records and a little perseverance. As Rhys says, it might just help people who are starting their ancestry journey.

We are sharing Rhys’ story through a simple Q&A.

What inspired you and your family to begin researching your genealogy?

My father, David, and his brother John grew up hearing tales about our ancestors from their parents. These stories were fascinating, but never officially documented. Over the past 30 years, they started piecing together our family history, uncovering some connections to the Hoskyns. My own curiosity led me to join them, using both free and paid search indexes to dive deeper into our past.

David and his brother, John

What were some of the major challenges you faced in your research, especially concerning older records?

One of the biggest hurdles was navigating the accuracy of records before the 1900s. At one point, we encountered 70 individuals with the same name born in the same year and area. It became a formidable task to sift through these records and identify our actual ancestors among many potential matches.

What tools and resources proved most valuable in your genealogical research?

We used a combination of free platforms, such as Free UK Genealogy and Find A Grave, and paid platforms such as Ancestry.com, and FindMyPast. These resources were invaluable for accessing a wide range of records, from census data to vital records, helping us piece together the lives and movements of our ancestors over the decades.

How did using FreeCEN, in particular, help you in your research?

I used FreeCEN mainly to quickly confirm information (about the Hoskyns family) that we had found from less reliable sources. We found a lot of false family trees along our journey, and using FreeCEN to quickly confirm or deny other information saved a lot of time!

The search functionality is extremely user friendly and, with no registration required, it is super simple.

Baronet Hungerford Hoskyns b. 1776 on FreeCEN

Could you share more about your most significant ancestral discoveries?

As well as tracing our lineage back to the Hoskyns baronets of Harewood in the UK, among our other more notable ancestors is Clara Southern (1860-1940), a well-known artist associated with the Heidelberg School (also known as Australian Impressionism). Additionally, a distant cousin had a familial connection to Christopher Wren's granddaughter, which was a fascinating discovery.

In the early 2000s, my father contacted the publishers of Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage* to try and get us entered into the book as descendants of the Hoskyns. For some reason, they denied his request, and that was put away in the cupboard. After re-confirming our link with the Hoskyns and gathering more evidence, I reached out to Debrett’s again, and they entered us into the book in 2023.

What personal impact has uncovering your family history had on you?

Exploring my family history has been incredibly rewarding. It has given me a profound sense of connection to my roots and a better understanding of how my ancestors lived. We've unearthed a wealth of material, including old photographs and immigration records, which has brought our family's past to life.

What advice would you offer to beginners in genealogy?

Be sceptical of the information you find, especially in family trees contributed by users. It's crucial to verify each connection with two or three sources. Marriage certificates are particularly useful, as they often list parents' names, allowing you to cross-reference these details with birth records to confirm relationships.

We’d like to thank Rhys for contacting us to share his experience. Do you have an interesting research story you’d like to share with fellow family historians? If so, please get in contact info@freeukgenealogy.org.uk

*Debrett's Peerage & Baronetage includes a short history of the family of each title holder, and has been published roughly every five years since around 1770.

As you may know, FreeBMD is our largest project with over 25,000 visitors searching the database per week. Despite being the original website from 1998 (!), family history researchers clearly value the completeness of the database and its powerful search facility.

For over a decade, Free UK Genealogy has been committed to refreshing our websites to make them more accessible to everyone in this modern age. The new FreeREG website was released in 2012 and FreeCEN followed in the summer of 2017; the enhancement of these sites offered improved readability, accessibility, and usability for all researchers.

In the course of enhancing our systems across the three projects, we are revamping the much-loved FreeBMD website!

We’re thrilled to share a teaser of the new FreeBMD search page, below. We hope you’re as excited as we are to try out the more intuitive, dynamic website; we’re sure it’ll help you take your family history research to the next level. 

The new-look FreeBMD website. Look out for some useful new features...

We expect the new FreeBMD website ("FreeBMD2") to be released for beta testing in 2025. As a volunteer-led charity, your donations and support have played a big part in helping us to reach this point. On behalf of everyone at FreeUKGEN and the wider genealogy community, thank you!

We have recently completed and filed our annual accounts (link) for Free UK Genealogy CIO, the charity that operates FreeBMD, FreeCEN and FreeREG projects. Last November, we shared the news that we had turned around our financial position after a few years of challenges. These accounts confirm the journey that we have been on, turning around a £30,000 deficit into a £43,000 surplus, and delivering the much strengthened financial position we now have:

Many people have contributed to this turnaround and we would particularly like to thank:

• Kate Streatfield, Nick Riches and William Speight, whose efforts on the Fundraising Steering Group bore fruit with the BigGive campaign last Christmas and increased donations
• Our partners at MyHeritage and Publift who have worked with us to improve the effectiveness of our advertising without degrading the user experience
• All our staff and volunteers whose ongoing efforts have helped keep costs under control.

But as we said last year, financial stability is not an end in itself: it means we can focus on supporting our websites and our volunteers and delivering our objectives – making genealogy records available –  in the best way possible. Our report also illustrates the urgency of this focus:

The continued reduction in volunteers highlights the importance of improving our transcription systems and the volunteer experience. Whilst 15 million new records is very impressive, this has continued to fall. Now that our financial position has been turned around, we also need to turnaround the decline in our volunteers and transcription rates - two key measures of how we deliver our objectives.

This was why we organised our Strategy Weekend in June, which brought together staff, volunteers and trustees to discuss our priorities. We have adopted “Quality, Value, Growth" as our focus as we look to strengthen our projects in the years to come.

We have started to appoint the additional committees we agreed at the strategy weekend, to focus on the key priorities and challenges that we are facing.

This will take time to bear fruit; however, just as we have been successful in turning around our financial position, we are confident that we can also turn around our slowing progress with our projects.