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New Zealand BMD on Ancestry

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  • New Zealand BMD on Ancestry

    On the official site https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/Home/ it says:

    WHAT’S NEW
    New Zealand records on Ancestry.com
    The NZ records able to be searched on Ancestry.com have not been provided by Births, Deaths and Marriages (BDM) New Zealand

    Seeing this I popped into my library (I use FMP) and had a look at Ancestry. The connection was terrible and I cannot be certain but I think the Library version of Ancestry does not show the parents of births. Would someone with an Ancestry sub including NZ have a look and tell me if parents are shown?

    BTW I wonder where Ancestry got the data from?
    People: Canton, Wiseman, Colthup, Scrace
    Places: Pembrokeshire, Kent.

  • #2
    Just checked a birth from 1909. The Ancestry record does not name the parents, but it does show the registration place. The official BMD site has the parents' given names but not the location. Also the reference number on the official site is different to the folio number on Ancestry, so they are evidently from different sources. It would seem to be advantageous to use both sites in order to get both pieces of info (i.e. parents names & the registration location).

    Neither site shows the actual date, but the ancestry site does show the quarter of registration. The actual date of the event can be obtained from the official site by gradually decreasing the date range until you narrow in on a single date.

    Cheers,
    Richard
    Last edited by Richard in Perth; 08-01-15, 14:19.

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    • #3
      This is what is says on the Ancestry site about the births dataset:

      Source Information
      Ancestry.com. New Zealand, Birth Index, 1840-1950 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
      Original data: New Zealand, Birth Index, 1840–1950. Microfiche.
      About New Zealand, Birth Index, 1840-1950
      This collection includes a searchable index to birth records from New Zealand covering the years 1840–1950. The index lists the name of the child, the quarter and year in which he or she was born, and a folio number associated with the microfiche index created by the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs. Note that prior to the year 1873 the quarter was not recorded. Also, the place noted in the record is where the birth was registered, rather than where the birth itself took place.
      Once you locate an ancestor in this collection, you can use the details to search the database on the New Zealand BDM website and request a copy of the original record, which will include more detail.
      Note that only stillbirths are available from 1915-1950.

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      • #4
        I just had another look at the NZ births & marriages that I have in my tree, and I notice that when the Ancestry databases were first put online, they included births and marriages up to 1950, as I have referenced some of these with the Ancestry records. However, now it seems that they have been wound back to include only births up to 1914 (except for stillbirths, which are still on there to 1950), and for marriages up to 1934. These date limits are the same as those currently available on the official NZ BDM site, so it looks as if Ancestry might have been told to take the more recent records offline. Shame! Still I suppose it means that the microfiche index must include births & marriages to 1950, so you might be able to find that at a library.

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        • #5
          Thanks Richard. I can't see that the data is much use (to me anyway) without the parents.
          People: Canton, Wiseman, Colthup, Scrace
          Places: Pembrokeshire, Kent.

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          • #6
            Without a trip into town to check the fiche, it was about late 60s or early 70s when the indexes began to list the mothers FORENAME! Very useful when looking for a Smith birth with mother Mary. Our nearest library has indexes up to 1990 although I understand some bigger centers have more recent methods.

            SS

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            • #7
              I guess then that the entire BDM's were completely re-indexed for the online version, to include the event date and parents names (for births) or birth date (for deaths), as these were not on the original microfiche indexes? Strange that they decided to take out the registration location though. I have noticed that there are mistranscriptions in the Ancestry data that are not present on the official BDM site, though I don't know whether these are as a result of errors in the original microfiche that have been corrected for the new online index, or whether they were introduced by the Ancestry transcribers.

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