Findmypast

The commercial site findmypast has digital images and transcriptions from the India Office Records at the British Library.

For a description of the databases, see External links below: "FindmyPast British India Office Collection".

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 findmypast can be found on the British Library website.

Note that some India Office Records will not be found in the findmypast database, (for technical or other reasons) but may be found on FamilySearch, as transcribed index records and microfilms. Examples are some/all of the records from Madras: Baptisms, Marriages, Burials ‎ (Oct 1815-May 1818) IOR/N/2/6 FamilySearch microfilm 506957 and Madras: Roman Catholic Returns of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials ‎ (1838-1839) IOR/N/2/RC/1-2 FamilySearch microfilm 530008.

Note that names may be transcribed incorrectly which will affect the findmypast Search. If you cannot find a record you are looking for, cross check with records on Familysearch, or try a more general search on findmypast. See "11 tips for searching", External links below.

Other records

There are other findmypast datasets which contain, or may contain, records relating to India.

• findmypast category "Directories & social history/ Social history"
  • British In India. Released 24 December 2015. Transcriptions and images from cards completed by Major Vernon Charles Padget Hodson (1883-1963), Lt. Col. Herbert Kendall Percy-Smith FSG (1897-1975) and others held at the Society of Genealogists, "British in India documents female relatives of officers of the Bengal Army, Madras Army and Bombay Army, along with British civil servants, chaplains, merchants, plantation owners, labourers and British people in India after the East India Company period". Note: The Search facility does not pick up the majority of the female names, only the male names. Most of the female names are only revealed when looking at the male records.
• findmypast category "Birth, Marriage, Death & Parish Records"
  • British Nationals Armed Forces Births, Marriages, Deaths. (3 datasets). For a description of these index records see Chaplains Returns.
  • British Nationals Born Overseas, Married Overseas, Died Overseas. (3 datasets). Currently (February 2015) these are index records. For a description see General Register Office
  • A dataset called "British Overseas Marriages" 1818-2005, includes some transcriptions of marriages at St John's Calcutta and , in spite of the dataset title, appear to be from the late 1700s/early 1800s. These are transcriptions, elsewhere stated to be from records at the Society of Genealogists, and are very limited in information. Only the year of marriage is given, and there are no details of the spouse. See Calcutta for possible sources of these records. There are also records from other counties in this dataset.
  • For records relating to BMD events at sea, see Births, marriages and deaths at sea‎.
  • A dataset called "Probate Calendars Of England & Wales 1858-1959", located in the sub-category "Wills & probate". For more details, see Wills, Administrations, Probate and Inventories.
• findmypast category "Census, Land & Surveys"
  • Census records may be useful for locating children at school in Britain, whose parents are in India. Census records are also available on Ancestry. Note: 1911 Census of Scotland is not included - this is available on ScotlandsPeople.
  • This category also contains electoral registers which may be useful if you are tracing a person who has returned or immigrated to the UK. The main database is "England & Wales, Electoral Registers 1832-1932", although there are gaps in the records for various years, and not all constituencies are included (ongoing project). These records are displayed as pdf documents. Read the findmypast Search tips. There are also electoral registers on Ancestry.
• findmypast category "Travel & migration", subcategory Passenger lists contains the dataset "Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960". Also see Passenger lists.
• For military records:
  • See British Army
  • Indian Army. There is an incorrectly titled dataset "British Army, Indian Volunteer Force Medal Awards 1915-1939", located under Armed forces & conflict/Medal rolls and honours. The information for each transcript was extracted from the Indian Army Orders by Kevin Asplin.
• findmypast category "Newspapers and periodicals". Online newspapers. See Newspapers.

Printing records from findmypast and/or Ancestry

If you want to print records:

"The answer is to DOWNLOAD the image to open in your own picture editing software. In FMP the download button is on the bottom right of the screen.

When you click on that link it will probably open a dialogue box asking you what you want to do with the file. I use IrfanView (a free and easy to use picture edition program) so my jpg downloads automatically come here and give me the option to open or save. Once open I then use the edit function to draw round and crop the page that I want and then print it – usually fits nicely on an A4 page and unless faded is readable.

On Ancestry it is to be found on the top right of the window green button labelled SAVE - choose the 'Save to your computer' option. Mine then behaves as it does for FMP.

… if you are using a library version of either… you may be able to save it to a USB stick and then edit it at home."

External links

• findmypast website. Under the tab "Search records" is a category "A-Z of record sets" which is a listing of all the record databases. Searching in the World record sets using the keyword India produces these datasets
• FindmyPast British India Office Collection
• The British In India collection bl.uk British Library official description of records currently on findmypast with references and dates covered.
• British in India records on findmypast – 11 tips for searching