Genealogy Chat

Its a misconception to believe that BMD's are records that will provide 100% certainty about your family tree.
I have come across a few BMD certificates that do not tie up with the facts.
For example the age of a bride and groom on a marriage certificate relys on the correct information being given to the registrar at the time of registration. I have some instances of ages given by bride and groom on a marriage certificate showing to be incorrect. Was this due to illiteracy, concealment or some other means. The same with registering deaths. The information is only as accurate as the person providing it when registering an event.
Equally, you can look at a census record for a particular person and in the following census you can see that person, who you expect to be 10 years older, out by upto 3 or 4 years. Again such records relied on someone in the household entering the information correctly in an era when many persons literacy was well short of what we would expect today.

To believe that BMD's are going to be 100 % accurate as a means of providing an accurate tree is questionable. BMD's will contain errors but these are normally of less frequency that other records but the level of errors will increase with time for the reasons given above.

Funny you should say that, Anthony - you must have heard about my great-grandad. Amazing man - born July 1860, in 1861 was 8 months old, in 1871 he was ten years old. By 1881 he was only eighteen, 1891 he was 29 and 1901 he was 37! (I know he should have been 40 then because I've got his birth certificate, but on the other hand his wife was eight years younger than him. Maybe they were playing down the gap?)

And then there's my great-grandma on the other side. Her birth certificate gives her birthday as the 12th March 1879 but her baptism record gives it as the 19th (her mother, who registered the birth, put a cross as her signature so if the date was wrong I suppose she wouldn't have realised). And I've got another ancestor - George Willday - who married, appeared on his children's baptisms and on the census as George, but at his death was registered as "Thomas George". I can't find a baptism that's definitely his because between 1851 and 1871 he gives three quite different birthplaces. (I only know it's him because of his wife being the same!) So I don't really know who he is or who his parents might be!

It pays to look at the BMDshare.com site, it has 21.329 certificates on it this morning and 552 for sale.
I have found two on it and saved £14

For me, buying a certificate is only done when really necessary - ie I dont know father's name or age of bride or groom.

But any names or information I take from someone's tree on here or on Ancestry I will verify with Census findings and BDM Registrations and any other way I can..

I am lucky as my mother's family are from Somerset and there are lots of Parish Records transcribed and on line - so I am able cross reference names and find them in the census with baptism or marriage records and vis versa.

At first I wasnt really interested in the death certificates - it was enough that I had the date, Death Registration or burial, but now I want to get them to find out what my ancestors died of.

You need lots of different things to do our hobby properly most of them have been listed above, but you really must do the walking and look at the real stuff in the record offices and the like.

Indexes are all right as far as they go but unless you look at the real stuff you can never be really sure, yes I know that even some of the real stuff is incorrect or could be but to just go on someone else’s indexes on the internet or wherever is not really doing our hobby in the right way.

Sometimes a certificate can add to the frustration, as when one of my ancestors has simply "Dead" for his father's name on his marriage certificate.
That has proved irritating because other evidence seems to show a still living father. So I am trying to unravel the mystery.

Any certificates can only take you back as far as 1837 and that isn't really very far in this game. So you need to learn to use a variety of documents like wills, land records, newspaper reports........anything really.

I have made a document listing my direct ancestors with columns showing each of the censuses, each type of certificate plus a column marked Other. I then tick the box next to each name for each proof found. I am lucky that a number of my names are unusual or very rare and I have no doubt that I have traced the right family groups. But my chart helped me to see which bits needed double checking.

If you can spare time to pour over parish records it really is worth looking at deaths first. There is no point in trying to trace the ancestry of someone who dies in infancy as they won't be your ancestor. It's also interesting to see that often parents had several children with the same name and earlier ones died. If not careful you could easily assume the first holder of the name is yours while in fact yours might be a namesake born several years later.

Sue

You could try getting someone else in the family interested in all of this - that way you could share the costs.

Or spread the cost. I pay a small amount of money into a number 2 account at the bank each month (plus any other odd little bits of money that come my way ...). This is my certificate fund. I can buy at least one cert per month and sometimes more. It spreads the load, spreads the cost and stops my normal bank account bounding off into the red!

(At the moment though there is oodles of cert money in there as I received a refund of my insurance excess after an accident the other month - so that's brilliant - but it's not always like that!)

Checkout whether records for the area you want are online. The Medway towns and Gravesend (and area) in Kent have parish records on line - free to access.

Norfolk has NOAH - which is a free resource and can be a great help.

Hertfordshire has HALS - you can check indexes for all sorts of bits on there - although they make a small charge for actual copies.

My advice - sketch out your tree in draft form - then (as someone else has suggested) colour them in as you gather your proof.

I read in one Genealogy book that you need 3 pieces of info for each of your ancestors. That's what I "try" to do and it really focuses you if you only have, say, their marriage cert and one mention on a census.

Good luck with it.

Jill

Thankyou everyone!

Some very helpful tips. I admit I am one of those people that say Ive got my family back to the 17th Century, and the only Birth Certificate I have is my own!
I am going to order the key ones and work my way back. That BMDshare website is a great find, and I will update that too, When they arrive.

The vast majority of my ancesters (if they are mine!) are from Suffolk where I live. Does that mean I can look at them locally for free. Sorry I am still new.

Norm

Probably so, if you can get to the local records office. The downside is that you may have to spend all day going through the parish registers for just one church (I have been back to Preston to look at one particular church's records at least four times - there's always something new to find!) but it will be free to get in and they'll probably give you a readers' ticket that you can use again.

The only things you may have to pay for, I think, are photocopies if you want them and/or you may need a £1 coin or something if you need to put things in a locker.

I have a theoretical tree on GR which needs Confirming. i also keep a spreadsheet of all bmd's i find with vol and page numbers and a natebook which lists the most pressing certs.

I am quite lucky in that both my maternal and Paternal surnames are very uncommon so it is not that difficult to be certain i have the right family. I am currently a full time student so i have had to put the certificates and progressing with the family tree on hold for a while due to the cost.

i do have A LOT of certificates so i am working on the people i know for certain are mine and i have stopped going back am jst fleshing everybody out some more. i have slowly been getting certificates as and when i can.

frustratingly last year i ordered a certificate because there were two marriages for jane fagan in same district. i put a checking point of fathers name and got an email to say wasn't right one, so ordered the other one and it was right. have today found out the first one i ordered was infact her mothers who remarried after her fathers death. spent four pound on checking a cert that was mine afterall!

Leanne.x

The staff in the Ipswich records office are very helpful; I have been there.

For people researching the same surname, and for people offering look ups, in Suffolk, this site is worth looking at
http://www.suffolk-surnames-list.co.uk/

Also, you could try joining the Suffolk Family History Society
http://www.suffolkfhs.co.uk/

Hoping that NORM sees the Suffolk site that I recommended.

Certificates can be invaluable. On one of my lines i got the marriage certificate of my ancestors. I was lucky enough to find that the registrrar had described one of the witnesses as the brides aunt. From that I could find the brides mother on earlier census and then find the parents marriage which had proved elusive up until then.

Forgot to say that I am in the lucky position of having very unusual names on both sides. (Well, apart from the Archers that is)

Hi Norm,
My g grandmother's family come from Suffolk and when I went there to do some 'sleuthing' found a church in Sweffling had copies of the parish records in the church!! The flower ladies were very useful too - told me that during the civil war, this church was for Royalist supporters, whereas the other church was where the Roundhead suporters worshipped!!! Thus realised that my ancestors in the 17th century were Royalists!!
You can't get information like that from the internet!!

BMD's are very important. My g grandad (not from suffolk) was Sidney - in censuses, on marriage certs, my grans birth cert - on his death cert - even on his gravestone - but that wasn't his birth name. He had the wonderful name of Giffard- so much easier to trace than Sidney!!

I gave him a few more 'choice' names when I found this out!!!

maggie

Thankyou all.

Im now going back through my tree, and starting a new 'confirmed one'

Thanks for the Websites Joy. I am going to the records office in Ipswich on my week off work.

Norm

I hope you really enjoy yourself there. It is hard work, looking through fiches and films but very rewarding when you find someone ... :-)

If you haven't already done so, you might like to explore this site -
http://www.suffolk.gov.uk/LeisureAndCulture/LocalHistoryAndHeritage
/SuffolkRecordOffice/ContactUsLocations/SuffolkRecordOfficeIpswichBranch.htm

Thankyou. I will be going there next week. Any Idea how much documents cost to print? I understand they do not do birth Certs. Can you get Confirmation and info from others there? Sorry for all the Questions, I dont want to look stupid when i go!

Norm

Norm, ring them, please, before you go. Tell them you have not visited a records office before and that you will need help. I think when I last visited one, photocopies were about 20p each, that was a few years ago. In the site that I gave, you will see the telephone number, opening hours, car parking etc.

Gaille - one of the things I use to sort my notes is one of those expanding cardboard A-Z file things. Only cost a couple of pounds but they help so much.

Each time I'm working on one branch - with my file (all tidy and organised - LOL) I can dip into the relevant pocket on the A-Z file and haul out anything else related to that family so that I can add the notes or file away the bits and pieces. So much easier than rummaging through the heap in the tray (my old system).

Jill