Genealogy Chat

My Dad's birth certificate wouldn't help there, would it?

Night Sue, and thank you.

PS

Don't buy credits on this site to do research.........that is a very expensive way of doing it!

Sue

Night

x

No your Dad's certificate would have his parents not his grandparents but you ought to have a copy filed away for reference.

If there are only three possibilities for William Arthur Smith, you can apply for the birth certs one at a time,specifying the birth date - if you ask for the wrong one they will refund 3quid!
At worst then it would cost you 7+4+4 !!
Another trick I use is to email the registry office direct with a question like "I am trying to track down William Smith b 1/9/1911 and see that you have a birth in that timeframe- could you let me know if I am on the right track before I order??" Amazing how often it works.

Peter in NZ

- also, remember - six weeks to register a birth means that registration in October might be a possibility - there are another three William Smith Staffordshire registrations in the fourth quarter of 1911

- also possible - registration as Arthur, with William added at baptism (one Staffs reg in the third q'r of 1911)
[or as "male" (name not decided when registering), but there are none in Free BMDs transcriptions of the last half of 1911 - which is shown on their coverage charts as complete]

- also, if the date of birth is taken from information at the date of his death, it might not be accurate and you might have to check out births in other years (however, if his birth certificate was available when his death was registered, this possibility is less likely)

The death certificate is at odds with Tracey's dates.

His birthdate according to his death certificate is 1910.

In that case, it will probably be safest to get the marriage certificate first, which will state both Florence and William's fathers' names, and then use that info to try Peter's trick to get the right birth certificate.

Ref for the marriage certificate:

OND 1931 Tamworth 6b 924
Florence M. Rimell marriage to Smith

(not needed to order, but this does correspond with an entry for William A. Smith OND 1931 marriage to Rimell Tamworth 6b 924)

If you think he was born Staffs then this is a possibility using the date on the death registration:


Births Sep 1910
SMITH William A Cheadle 6b 354


There's also this one in the same district where he died:


Births Dec 1910
SMITH William A Nuneaton 6d 423

Rose

I can't beleive how helpful you all are...thank you so much.

I have since found out (from my first visit here) that my grandparents were married on boxing day, but unsure of the year.

Am I right in thinking that the only way to find out for sure is to buy the certificates? Doesn't that work out very very expensive? Isn't there a way of double checking first?

I am very grateful for all the help given to me regarding this, thank you.

This isn't a cheap hobby Tracey.

You do need to buy some certificates.

Later on as you get further back you may be lucky and find a lot of information on census details but even then you will probably need to get some certificates to check details.
Kind souls may do some census lookups for you and you might get lucky and find someone researching the same family.....but you'd need to check details to make sure they are accurate even then.

Best wishes
Sue

Thank you Sue,

So do you think that buying my grandparents marriage certificate would be a good start then?

If you read the Tips for Newbies thread it will give you an overview of researching.

Your grandparents marriage cert would give you:

Both their names, their ages, their residence, their occupations, their fathers names and occupations and the witnesses names. From that information you can work backwards through certificates and census info plus lots of other goodies that I wont load your brain with now.

If I were you the first thing Id do is take a sub with ancestry.co.uk (you can have 14 days free trial) it has so many records including all the bmd index and the census 1901-1841 and much much more.

Have fun. Ill bump up the Tips for Newbies thread for you.

I would be inclined to get the marriage cert first as that will give you enough info to get back to the 1901 census and earlier - that's when ancestry gets useful - but at the moment there are enough people on this site who will probably do ancestry lookups for you - once they know who to look for.

P in NZ

Oh brilliant! I shall do just that then. How long do you have to wait for a certificate once you have ordered?

You have all been so helpful.

Lol @ Heather's post...how did you know that my brain was so full to overload?!?!?

I usuall get certs into New Zealand in about 10 days, so you should get yours in a week - depends how busy they are!!

P in NZ

I have just gone onto general register office and they want £10.00 per copy...is that the normal price? Or am I on the wrong site? Duh, sorry to be a pain.

You should go to http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificate/

The details you need to enter are
Oct, Nov, Dec Quarter
1931 Year
Place Tamworth
Vo;ume 6b
Page 924
Bride's name Florence Rimell

Nothing else needed.
It should cost you 7 pounds

Peter in NZ