Findmypast

The commercial site findmypast.co.uk has digital images and transcriptions from the India Office Records at the British Library, which were made available 29 January 2014.

Categories often cover a wide range of records. This is particularly true for those which might, at first glance, appear to relate only to church records. For example, the sections on births and baptisms also include such records as Addiscombe Cadets and Writer applications and those in the Deaths and Burials category show returns of death of uncovenanted civil servants and other officers which give details of family and property left by the deceased.

A full list of the records available in the British In India Collection on Find My Past can be found on the British Library website. (See external links below)

Searching tips

• Tip 1

Wish you could fill in the parents names and have a list of search results showing all their children? Unfortunately you can't do that, but you can do something else that will produce similar results.

1. Enter the surname only

2. Enter the father’s first name into OPTIONAL WORDS

3. Click 'Search India Office Births and Baptisms'

• Tip 2

Looking for cadet application forms and petitions? You need to search British India Office Births & Baptism as they seem to be in with those and not in with military records.

• Tip 3

Looking for a surname beginning with O ? Quite a few seem to have been data entered as O' . We have come across OLIVER entered as O 'LVER and OGLE as O'LE etc.

• Tip 4

Take the location given in a search result with a pinch of salt. Quite a few index entries give the wrong location for the event. This seems to be down to the transcriber misunderstanding the location written at the top of the page. For instance, some events at Chunar are indexed as Benares, because the original record notes 'Baptisms at Chunar within the district of Benares'. We have found other entries indexed as being at Calcutta, when it really was within the archdeaconry/diocese of Calcutta and some Dehra Dun records indexed as Benares. That is a minor inconvenience as some locations are close, but a reminder to check the wider area.

• Tip 5

Know someone is definitely baptised, married or buried somewhere, but can't find it when searching?

Put an * in first name field ( don't check the variant option)

Put an * in surname field ( don't check the variant option )

Now fill in a place name eg Vepery in the place field

Run search

You will get all the baptisms, marriages or burial's that show the event occurring in Vepery.

• Tip 6

Looking for a surname beginning with D' ? We have found a few D' entered as O' . For example D'Emello has been entered as O'Emello etc.

External links

• The British In India collectionbl.uk British Library official description of records currently on Find My Past with references and dates covered.