We encourage you to do your own research as far as you can; you will find it a rewarding and interesting undertaking, and occasionally a little frustrating. If you are hindered by distance or disability and need help to access the registers, transcripts and documents held in the parishes and county offices we can help.
The Internet makes it possible to access and view lots of records and share information online but you do need to satisfy yourself the information you are given is supported by the records.
Certificates of the majority of births, marriages and deaths after 1837 are available from the General Registrar’s Office but in the case of marriages you may think a copy taken directly from the church register has a more authentic feel (and it will probably cost less!)
A copy of the entry in the church baptism register can be nice to have as well as the General Registrar’s copy birth certificate. Similarly a copy of an entry in a church burial register: neither is essential but does add detail to your research.
Before 1837 you have to rely on the church registers and parish records for your information and other records are available as well.
How can we help? We can search the parish registers and records for you and provide copies of any relevant entries.
How much do we charge? We will only charge you if we find anything to help you. We will tell you in advance what the cost is and we will only bill you when the work is done. We are not here to profit and our charges are set to help cover our operating costs. We invoice through PayPal, which is a safe, secure payment service.
Copy documents can be emailed to you or we can mail you hard copies.
Tell us what information you have and what you are seeking and we will try to help. If you just want copies of documents tell us what they are and we will get them for you.
Many of you will know that we closed the site for a while because of ‘spammers’ constantly trying to post inappropriate messages on our forum and initially we decided not to include a forum on this our new site, but we have had second thoughts and hope the forum will, as it did before, quickly become the heart and soul of our site.
Ideally we would like you to post your requests for information, look-ups of registers and other documents and copy documents on the forum but if you prefer you can contact us privately and we will reply by email.
Do remember we are totally focused on your Dorset Ancestors.