Our Mission
The purpose of this site is to build an affordable, accurate database of information from UK Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates, by sharing the information we have already bought on our certificates.
How BMDshare came to exist.
I started researching in 2004 and immediately loved the subject and the helpfulness of the people I had been in contact with. Instantly I wanted to give something back and help others as I had received so much help myself. I contacted FreeCen to offer my services as a volunteer transcriber. I was a complete failure! I spent hours transcribing only to have my work returned and my many errors pointed out to me! I was so disappointed but had to admit I was useless. If I was being honest it was my partner who had deciphered all the handwriting and me who had introduced all the spelling mistakes!
I continued with my research and was amazed to discover that you couldn't access BMD Certificates online. I was even more surprised to discover that you couldn't view them at Records / Registers Offices either. As I don't live in the area of my research the Parish Registers weren't that useful for me. This is when I realised that there was something I could do, to give something back to everyone in genealogy with this website. To create a site where the information is both available and affordable, so BMDshare was born in August 2006. As a complete website novice it took a lot of time and learning for me and some invaluable help from some lovely people. BMDshare existed for 3 years before technological advances made the programming obsolete and the site could not function. Time, finances and technical expertise stopped me from re-attempting this project. The original site was free, funded by only myself.
Fast forward to 2022 and I am trying again. I realise this is not something I can build or fund alone and I wish to keep the site alive this time so I have introduced both a free and a cheap membership scheme which I hope will be supported. The site is still young and during the early stages will be more about how much we can put in rather than how much we get out. In time, with support this will obviously change and hopefully the site will become a useful resource. Please remember as you visit the site, just how young it still is and what we can achieve.
I believe that together we can rebuild momentum and continue the growth of the certificate database to help everyone. So please enter your certificates, even if you only have one! It's been quite a journey and it’s taken a lot of time and money to get this far. I hope together we can make it a very useful, inexpensive resource.
Best Wishes
Maria