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BMD data gives names and dates only. You can't view the original certificates online. Once you have identified the entries you want from the indexes, you can get copies of certificates from the GRO or the Superintendent Registrar for the district where the registration was made. The registration districts, and hence the Superintendent Registrars, are county-based. County boundaries have changed a lot over the years, sometimes several times, and places won't necessarily be found within present-day boundaries. Use the pre-1974 boundaries from www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/RegOffice.

You need to pay for a copy of a certificate (£10 from www.gro.gov.uk) but it's worth it for the information it gives about next of kin. Birth certificates give the child's forenames, sex, date and place of birth, the mother's full name and maiden name, and the father's full name and occupation if married to the mother. Death certificates give the full name of the deceased, date and place of death, age, cause of death and occupation. Birth and death certificates also give the name, address and family relationship of the person (the informant) who registered the birth or reported the death. Marriage certificates give the date and place of the marriage, whether by banns, licence or certificate. They also show the names, ages, occupations, marital status and addresses of the bride and groom, the names and occupations of the fathers of the bride and groom, and the names of the witnesses.

If you need overseas

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BMD records, try Family Relatives (www.familyrelatives.com). As well as providing UK data (for which you have to pay), this site also has an overseas section that is currently free. Data is in the form of facsimile scanned pages of the indexes. To view them, you need the free DjVU viewer; you will be invited to install or upgrade this program, as required, when you visit the site.

Parish registers

Parish registers can take you back to before the earliest civil registrations. They are usually transcriptions rather than images and can therefore be easily searched. The website claiming the most parish register records for people to search is The Genealogist (www.thegenealogist.co.uk), but there are others. To find the register most relevant for your family history, go to Google, check that the 'pages from the UK' option is selected and do a search for Parish Register.

Locating Censuses

Once you have all the BMD information you can find, try the census. Censuses were taken every 10 years, except 1941, from 1841. The data currently stops at 1901, because their publication is withheld for 100 years. The official 1901 Census website is www.1901censusonline.com.

Censuses are arranged by address. Every census since 1851 will give you the recorded address, the forenames and surnames of residents as well as their relationship to the head of the house, and their marital status (known as the 'condition'). For genealogists, censuses are a rich source of useful data, as you also get ages (although these are usually approximate), rank, occupation, where the person was born, and whether they were blind or deaf and dumb.

For each address you get the entire household, which usually means a whole family. It's a good introduction to members of your family you never knew you had, who can then be tracked back through previous censuses. As traditionally people didn't tend to move far, you are likely to find more family members by looking at nearby records.