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National Burial Index
What is the National Burial Index? This very important data, of which 59% has never been published before, indexes more than 13 million burials from registers in England and Wales from 1538 onwards. It is not a complete index to all burials, but represents an enormous effort by Family History Societies and Groups over 10 years to make available a large amount of information easily searchable in your own home. The National Burial Index, known as the NBI, is quality British data at an affordable price. History of the National Burial Index The National Burial Index was begun by the Federation of Family History Societies in 1994 and the first edition was published in 2001 with some 5.4 million burial records. As an ongoing project, further collections of records were encouraged and continued to be received by the FFHS data manager. Over the ensuing three years sufficient additional material has now been collated to make a new edition feasible. A substantial number of member societies that did not originally participate in the burial project have become actively involved by presenting data they already held, or have embarked on this as a new project for their area.There are still some member societies which have not yet submitted their data to the NBI Project as work has only just begun or have pressures to complete other projects before undertaking the time consuming job of transcribing burial registers. However it is hoped that they too will be submitting further records for a proposed third addition in several years time. What Information is on the disk? The information provided in the National Burial Index, taken from parish, non-conformist, Roman Catholic and cemetery registers , includes where available:
The National Burial Index does not contain full transcriptions of the burial records - it is simply an abbreviated finding-aid based on records that were sometimes difficult to read. As with the IGI, searchers are therefore discouraged from accepting the details of an entry at face value and should check the original source record. Also included is mapping software that interacts with the data. The maps display:
Using the program supplied on the CDROM, the searcher can interrogate the database by a number of methods: a standard surname and forename synonym 'dictionary', a list of uniquely-occurring surname spelling variants, or by using 'wildcards'. The search can be 'refined' by specifying date ranges or locations. To date, over 50 Family History Societies or Groups are involved with the project. Each appoints a co-ordinator who recruits inputters, checkers and correctors. Wherever possible, transcriptions are made from original source records but where this is not feasible other sources, such as microfiche transcriptions or printed registers, are used. Counties on the Disc The following table indicates the number of records held for different counties. Note the new counties of Brecon, Cornwall, Cumberland, Isle of Man, London City, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Sussex and Westmorland entering the database for the first time.
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