RootsChat.Com
Research in Other Countries => United States of America => Topic started by: Romilly on Saturday 31 October 09 09:27 GMT (UK)
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Does anyone on here know...
Is there a USA equivalent of the UK Free BMD?
I'm trying to follow some of my Welsh ancestors who emmigrated to the USA, & only have access to the UK Collections on Ancestry. I'm looking mainly at Wisconsin, & everything there seems to be on pay to view sites:-(
Cheers, Romilly.
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Hi Romilly,
I'm not a USA expert, but my general impression is that projects like
- freeBMD
- freeREG
- freeCEN
- the county BMD sites ( http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/ ) and
- the OPC sites
and the thinking (and volunteer work) behind them are all "very British" and have very few equivalents in other countries.
There are possibly a few 'local' projects here and there, but very little on the scale of the above mentioned projects.
Bob
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Hi Bob,
Thanks for the feedback.
I had suspected that would be the case!
I shall have to save up before I can proceed further ;D ;D
Romilly ;)
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here's is a possibility for further (free) research:
Have a look in the RootsChat Reference (http://www.rootschat.com/forum/Themes/history/images/english/library.gif) (http://surname.rootschat.com/lexicon/index.php) => Useful Links (click here) (http://surname.rootschat.com/lexicon/reflib-useful-links.php)
Choose the category "link lists" and work your way through those lists -
someone, somewhere may have some 'local' project about Wisconsin or about welsh emigrants/immigrants which might help :)
Good luck,
Bob
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Many Thanks Bob.
I will get onto that later today.
Cheers, Romilly.
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Hi Romilly: Bob is mostly right. Some U.S. states make their BMD records (or indexes) available online, but many of the BMD projects are volunteer and very local--usually at the county level of individual states. These are loosely coordinated by the USGENWEB Project, which you can search on the Web and then find individual state and county pages.
The best thing for you to do is to post a look up request for U.S. federal census information on the USA board here at Rootschat with names, dates, locations, etc. Depending on when they came over, you might also find registrations for the World War I and World War II drafts, addresses in directories, and so on. WIth the U.S. Social Security Death Index (the closest we have to a national death index), you may be able to find out information on relatives who passed away after 1962 (and who had a Social Security number).
If you want to do some looking on your own, you can go to the FamilySearch Pilot site (maintained by the LDS), where you'll find Wisconsin and U.S. censuses.
The site is at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#p=0
When you get to the site, click on the "Browse our record collections" link just under the search boxes, then click on the map of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. When scrolling down to examine the collections and when searching with in them, be sure to use the scroll bar on the right. Otherwise you'll have problems navigating.
If you want to order BMD certificates, you can go to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services vital records page at http://dhs.wisconsin.gov/vitalrecords/index.htm
Regards,
John :o :o :o
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Hi John,
Many Thanks for all the info & Links, - much appreciated.
My problem is that the folks that I'm interested in might still be alive...& so my Posts on here would be removed for that reason:-(
I guess that what I really need is the USA equivalent of 192.com that we have here; which searches the Electoral Rolls.
Best Wishes, Romilly.
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Hi Romilly: I'll send you a PM on other possible courses of action.
John :o :o :o
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Hi Romilly
You could try www.411.com if you think they may still be alive.
Karen
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Hi Romilly
You could try www.411.com if you think they may still be alive.
Karen
Thanks for the Link Karen,
I'll try for my cousin's widow, - but I'm sure that his daughter's will have changed their names by marriage:-(
Best Wishes, Romilly.
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Hi Romilly: I'll send you a PM on other possible courses of action.
John :o :o :o
Many Thanks John, - I look forward to hearing from you.
Best Wishes, Romilly.
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HI Romilly,
There are state and local genealogy groups in the USA that you could google to find and then contact. The couple of gengealogy club/groups that I have contacted have been very good to me. One of the volunteers with the club in Michigan actually called everyone in their local phone book with my ancestor's last name till she finally located a distant cousin of mine. Ironically, the volunteer worked with my cousin's mom many years prior to that. Funny how things connect :-) I eventually met my distant cousin and we had a gr8 time discussing our common ancestors.Anyway, might pay if you contact the genealogy people in the area you are looking and ask for some help.
The 2 RAOGK (randoim acts of genealogical kindness) volunteers I have worked with here and abroad have been very helpful as well to help with my knocking down of a brick wall or 2.
Hope that helps,
JDC
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HI Romilly,
There are state and local genealogy groups in the USA that you could google to find and then contact. The couple of gengealogy club/groups that I have contacted have been very good to me. One of the volunteers with the club in Michigan actually called everyone in their local phone book with my ancestor's last name till she finally located a distant cousin of mine. Ironically, the volunteer worked with my cousin's mom many years prior to that. Funny how things connect :-) I eventually met my distant cousin and we had a gr8 time discussing our common ancestors.Anyway, might pay if you contact the genealogy people in the area you are looking and ask for some help.
The 2 RAOGK (randoim acts of genealogical kindness) volunteers I have worked with here and abroad have been very helpful as well to help with my knocking down of a brick wall or 2.
Hope that helps,
JDC
Hi JDC,
Thanks for all of the ideas.
I have had amazing help with this so far, - both on & off here, & I'm hoping to make more progress asap. :)
Thats great that you managed to meet up with your cousin eventually, - fingers crossed that will happen with mine too at some stage!
Best Wishes, Romilly.
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Hi,
I realize I'm a bit late in replying, but if you need anything looked up in the USA please message me. I volunteer at the Iowa Genealogical Society in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowa is a neighboring state to Wisconsin, I think we may have some records from there. If not I can do an online search for you so you wouldn't have to pay.
Let me know!
--Alex K
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Hi,
I realize I'm a bit late in replying, but if you need anything looked up in the USA please message me. I volunteer at the Iowa Genealogical Society in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowa is a neighboring state to Wisconsin, I think we may have some records from there. If not I can do an online search for you so you wouldn't have to pay.
Let me know!
--Alex K
Hi Alex K,
Many Thanks for your kind offer, - much appreciated.
With much help from on here, I did succeed in tracking down some Rees/Phillips/Perlick descendants in the US. I wrote to what I believed to be a current address, (back in Oct 2009). However, despite including all of my contact details, (including Mobile no and home and email addresses)...I have never recieved a reply. :-\
I can only conclude that I was either mistaken in the address/the family that I was looking at/or that they had no interest in the family photos that I was offering to share.
It was very disappointing.
Best Wishes, Romilly.
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Thanks for the link to www.411.com I wasn't aware of that site :)
Linda
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Hi,
I am interested to find out the answer to something related to Romilly's orginal question: where are BMDs or vital statistics held in the states in the USA? And, what is the process of getting them, I have quite a few American ancestors I am tracking - mostly pre-1900.
JDC
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The United States does not have a Central Registry or BMD Index, what is available varies State to State and County to County. https://www.familysearch.org/ has some census and other records which are available and is a good place to start.
Sandra
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If you have a particular state or city that you are looking to order vital records from, I would recommend doing a Google search for something like, say, Alabama death records or California vital records. A government site should come up in the first few results. Most states started to require vital records in the late 1800's or early 1900's, so what's available before then may be spotty.
As far as seeing what's available online, this site has a lot of helpful links: http://www.deathindexes.com/sites.html
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HI Romilly,
Thx Shellyesq, it appears the link you gave will be helpful. I am currently focused on finding birth records for my 3rdG-grandfather Orrin, bn 1796 in Ashford and his father Smith Holt, bn in Hartford Conneticut. I have Smith's marriage info from the Barbour Collection transcription as well as Orrin's marriage (church record transcription) and death information from the Ontario Ontario Vital Statistics Agency and newspaper obit. The thing missing is the birth records :-( I did contact the Ashford CT municipal office for Orrin's birth record, but no luck there.
I too live not too far from Wisconsin, albeit a Canadian neighbour. You may want to contact a RAOGK volunteer at http://www.raogk.org/ who lives in the area being searched to do some work for you. There seem to be quite a few volunteers in Wisconsin. Most do the work for free but some of them do charge for photocopying and the like so you will need to ask ahead of time.
Hope this helps,
JDC
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Thanks for the link to www.411.com I wasn't aware of that site :)
Linda
I just tried putting in the name of the family descendant that I wrote to...and it comes up with the same address.
I don't know whether to just give up altogether...or to try writing again ::) ::) ::)
The address that I tried was in Milwaukee. Is there anyone on here who knows that neighbourhood?
Romilly.