Where do the records in the FamilySearch database come from?

Jon Jay

I recently joined and searched for family members. I was interested to find records of one branch of my family as they interest me a lot.

I did however discover records from a living relation from another branch of my family tree. I contacted this person to say that those records are to found on FamilySearch, and that person was a little disconcerted by that.

So I am just curious to know how such records enter the FamilySearch database? To clarify, the records in question are birth and marriage records from the United Kingdom. Would they have been entered by users of the website? I cannot see any information on the records themselves.

Thanks in advance!

Áine Ní Donnghaile

We'll need more specifics to give a good answer. If these are "records" (birth, marriage, death) they likely came from a set of records created by a city, state, or church, for example. The city, etc, would have a contract with FamilySearch for the microfilming and later digitization of those records. That generally applies to records more than 100 years old.

But, it's also possible for anyone and everyone to contribute records they have from their own files or from searching on another site.

When you are viewing a person's profile, you can view the changelog and see how each addition was made to the profile.

Jon Jay

To be more precise, I am referring to records from the England and Wales registration indices, e.g.: https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/2285732. I just noticed the link to the "collection information" on the records. I see that the same indices are also freely available from other websites, such as: https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl

Thanks again for your help!

Áine Ní Donnghaile

And collection 2285732 is from FindMyPast.com, a UK-based genealogy firm. The indexes are also available and searchable, free, on https://www.gov.uk/research-family-history a UK government site.