Tracing a Birth, Death or Marriage in Cheshire

The Register Offices in  Cheshire, England, hold records of Local births, marriages and deaths back to the start of civil registration in 1837.

The county's Family History Society is collaborating with the local Registration Services to make the indexes to these records freely searchable via the Internet.

Although the indexes are not yet complete for all years and districts, we hope that the database will eventually cover all Cheshire births, marriages and deaths from 1837.

In 2000 Cheshire's Registration Services became the first in the country to post their Birth, Marriage and Death records on the Internet.

CheshireBMD is a joint project between the county's registration services and family history societies, to revolutionise public access to records dating back from the start of Queen Victoria's reign.

In the past, most enquiries for copy certificates have involved Registrars manually searching through hand-written indexes which refer to weighty copperplate ledgers. But now the indexes to an estimated four million births, marriages and deaths from 1837 to 1950 are being made freely available to family historians throughout the world on the CheshireBMD website (external link)/

Researchers can make use of the site's user-friendly search techniques to identify the names they are looking for, and obtain reference numbers from which Registrars can supply the birth, marriage and death certificates.