The following announcement was written by FindMyPast.com:
Premier UK family history website www.findmypast.com today announced that it has added another 1.2 million National Burial Index Records to its existing online collection. The new records cover the counties of Somersetshire, Dorset and Essex and have been contributed by the Somerset and Dorset Family History Society and the East of London Family History Society as part of an arrangement with the Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS) to transfer their local family history society records to findmypast.com.
Among the famous names that can be found in the new burial index records at www.findmypast.com is author Thomas Hardy, whose burial on 11 January 1928 aged 82 is recorded in Stinsford, Dorsetshire.
The burial index brings together in one easy-to-search central place the disparate records from local parishes, which members of local family history societies have been compiling since 1994, under the guidance and encouragement of the Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS). It includes records from parish registers, non-conformist registers, Roman Catholic, Jewish and other registers as well as cemetery and cremation records. It will complement the Latter Day Saints' International Genealogical Index (IGI), which contains mainly baptisms and marriages.
Thanks to the cross-database search facility at findmypast.com, you will be able to search for your ancestor by surname across all the records on the site without needing to know where in the country they came from.
Previously some of these records were made available to the public by the Federation on CD ROM and at its own pay per view website www.familyhistoryonline.net but following a landmark agreement between the Federation and findmypast.com in September 2007, burial records can now be searched online alongside findmypast.com's existing collection of over 550 million records. The records at www.familyhistoryonline.net will be transferred to the findmypast.com website in phases over the next few months.
The National Burial Index records can be accessed as part of an Explorer subscription package or with pay-per-view units.
