Automatic generation of preliminary genealogies using the UK’s local BMD registers

Bush, Stephen J

Annals of Genealogical Research > Vol. 5, No. 1 (2009)

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Automatic generation of preliminary genealogies using the UK’s local BMD registers

Stephen J Bush

Abstract
The birth, marriage and death (BMD) registers for the UK represent the most convenient way to immediately trace ones UK ancestors back to the date at which civil registration was introduced, 1837. These registers actually exist in two variants, one held by central government and earlier copies held locally, in individual counties, from which the central register was periodically transcribed. Given this transcription stage may introduce unnecessary errors in the national BMD registers, the local copies are much preferred for research – yet it’s only comparatively recently that they are made available online. However, most local indexing projects are ongoing, and therefore the local BMD databases are often incomplete. However, the Bath BMD indexing project was completed recently, in February 2008, and as such there is opportunity to explore the possibilities of possessing a complete digitised database. A research tool with the capacity to automatically construct preliminary genealogies from BMD databases is herein presented, tested and its merits discussed. This tool is available as supplementary material attached to this article or upon email request to the author. That the best example of a local BMD database is restricted to the Bath area should be of minimal concern to those with no connections to it: the tool and the underlying principles may be employed on many other databases of the same type.

Full text of article: PDF (48 KB)

Cite as: Stephen J Bush, "Automatic generation of preliminary genealogies using the UK’s local BMD registers," Annals of Genealogical Research Vol. 5, No. 1 (2009) at http://www.genlit.org/agr/viewarticle.php?id=27

Supplementary Files:

BMDTreeGen

Subject areas: Local BMD database mining; research tools; Bath

Annals of Genealogical Research - ISSN 1555-9904