USA Free BMD?

[Romilly]

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.

[Berlin-Bob]

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

[Romilly]

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

Romilly

[Berlin-Bob]

here's is a possibility for further (free) research:

Have a look in the RootsChat Reference => Useful Links ^{(click here)}

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

[Romilly]

Many Thanks Bob.

I will get onto that later today.

Cheers, Romilly.

[johnnyboy]

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 

[Romilly]

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.

[johnnyboy]

Hi Romilly: I'll send you a PM on other possible courses of action.

John 

[KarenM]

Hi Romilly

You could try www.411.com  if you think they may still be alive.

Karen