Genealogy Chat

Oh yes - thanks for the reminder , ErikaH.:

GRO site for births in England and Wales , 1837 -1934, and 1984 - 2019.
Free to use.
https://www.gro.gov.uk

For England/Wales use freebmd (after1911) or the GRO site for all years from 1837

Both free - and very simple to use

Hardly any of the helpers on the GR boards use GR for research.

The answer to your question depends on where and when the birth took place - and it's only possible in certain timespans.

For births in England or Wales, between 3rd quarter 1911, and approx 1992, use FreeBMD:
https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl
As the name suggests, it's free to use.
You can't search with both surnames for births before Sept qr 1911 on FreeBMD. (Well, you can, but you won't get any results.)

For the same period, and also more recent births, (in England/Wales) use Ancestry - and I expect FMP too, though I don't have a sub to that myself.
Both require subscriptions - but you can always ask us to search for you.

For births/baptisms in Scotland before 1855, use Scotlands People:
https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
For later births in Scotland (1855 onwards) , you can't use the mother's surname in the search, unfortunately.


FamilySearch (which is free to use) will also let you search with both names, for UK and other births - but not all birth records will include the mother's name.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/

Most people don’t use genes for bmds searches

Depending on the years Freebmd will show both surnames with the same gro ref

Or you can check the gro site as it will show mothers maiden name

Any one know how I search for any births using surnames of both parents at the same time. There site only seems to allow one surname to be typed in. As one of the surnames is very common it throws up hundreds of possibles to trawle through.
Thanks
Sandra