General Chat

Can you explain how I search for children of a relative?
I’m interested to know if my great grandmother had another child that we don’t know about and I’ve no idea how to check.

If you can help please give me an idiot’s guide.

Thanks in advance

Jackie x

Was she married? Is this in England or Wales?

If so, there are 2 options depending when the child may have been born.

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/Login.asp
(you do have to create a free account)
Click on GRO Indexes,
1837-1918 Births
& 1837-1957 Deaths

Select birth
Enter the father's surname & mother's maiden name in the appropriate boxes
Select a year dated 2 years after their marriage +/-2 , male, then search.
Do the same with female.
You should be able to mentally filter the results depending on the registration district where the known children were born. If you're sure they would have all been registered in the same area, you can use the data base filter as a search parameter.

Repeat the search in 4 yearly increments until the mother would have been expected to have passed childbearing age or, if earlier, had died.

Bear in mind that it wasn't compulsory to register a birth until about 1877.

The other option post 1918 is https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl
With that one you can select a year range. The mother's maiden name isn't recorded until Sep quarter 1911.

Should add that still births/miscarriages aren't recorded on that index. An infant has to take a breath to be declared living & registered even if the birth is registered at the same time as its neonatal death.

Are they on the 1911 census
That will say how long married and how many children born and how many still living

You can also check freebmd for any births which will show mmn for births reg after 1911
Before then check the gro site for births using the surname and mmn

on freebmd
you can search for children of a mother using her maiden name if after 1911/12

note to self try reading ALL the posts before making a comment!!

I have found a few cases where a child was born but died very soon/days after birth. The birth should have been registered.

In those cases, I have not found a birth but I have found a death registration for the child.

The only thing I can think of is that in the upset of the birth/trying to keep the child alive/death of the child, and maybe ill health of the mother, everyone forgot to register the birth.

Occasionally it has been possible to find a private baptism for the child that proved the connection .............. the vicar had gone to the house and baptised the child.