Using Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates from the General Register

Office (GRO) – for England and Wales

Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths began in July 1837. At that time, England & Wales was

subdivided into administrative areas known as registration districts. Within each district, a registrar

recorded births, marriages and deaths.

Four times a year, in March, June, September, and December, all the registers for England & Wales

were collated into a single countrywide index, arranged alphabetically by surname. Each quarter

covers the month itself and the two preceding months.

By law, births had to be registered within 42 days. Note that, for the researcher, marriages, unlike

births, have the advantage of being registered immediately at the time of the event. If you can’t find

your ancestors in the marriage records, it’s possible they eloped or were in common law relationships.

Or just perhaps it’s a mistake and the record was omitted from the index.

Stepping back in time in your family tree using certificates and indexes

A birth certificate contains the names of the father and the mother. Using those and the birth date of

the child, you are able to search for the likely marriage date of the parents. You may not know if this is

the first child or final child in the family, or even if the marriage took place years after the first child

was born, so you may have to search over a wide date range to find the marriage.

The marriage certificate usually contains the ages of the couple. These give you their likely birth years.

The fathers’ names are on the certificate as well. This information is sufficient to give you a starting

point for finding the birth records of the couple. If the wife’s surname is different from her father’s

surname, she may have been married previously. Note the entry in the column headed ‘Condition’ on

the certificate.

With these birth certificates in hand, the cycle of stepping back in time continues, i.e. next find the

marriage of their parents. Note the names of witnesses on marriage certificates. These may have

been relatives of the couple and can provide resources for additional research.

You can use these websites for finding the GRO index details.

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ https://www.ancestry.co.uk/ http://www.findmypast.co.uk/ http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/

https://www.myheritage.com https://familysearch.org/

The advantage of using FamilySearch to look up the index details is the ease of adding the result as a

source in Family Tree. The latest years, in the index, may be different according to the provider and

should be considered if searching for a recent event.

The index details are in the form of volume and page numbers – example: 9B 427. Also note the

registration district, quarter and year.

Most of the information with regard to a civil registration is only available by purchasing the certificate,

although you can reach some conclusions as shown by the case studies in the following pages. If you

do need to purchase a certificate, the GRO website is the least expensive option – currently (March

2017) at £9.25 per certificate.

Go to: http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/ Click ‘Order certificates online’ then ‘Order Certificates

Online and search the GRO historic birth and death indexes.’ You will need to register to use this

website, but registration is free. Then click ‘Search the GRO Indexes.’

Using the General Register Office search tool (for births 1837 – 1916 and deaths 1837 - 1957)

A recent innovation is the ability to search for birth certificates using the mother’s maiden name. This

is useful for finding children who were born and died between census dates. The usage is best

illustrated with the following real-life examples:

Case Study 1

Information known by a sister in the family – Ethel Worley:

Two children were born in the five year period 1900 – 1904, but died in infancy.

Their names and gender are unknown, but mother’s maiden name was Smallman.

Previous and later children were registered in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.

Two searches are needed – one for gender male and one for gender female. The year of registration is

entered below as 1902 with a spread of +/- two years, to cover the period in question.

Result for the male search. The child was George Worley registered in the June Quarter in 1901.

For the female search, two children were found. Ethel Worley lived in to her eighties and was the

source of the original information. Therefore the second unknown child was Esther Worley registered

in the June Quarter in 1903.

Case Study 2

Finding children who were born and died between censuses, further back in time with no personal

knowledge of the events. If the family had their children christened, then you may be able to identify

all members by researching parish records. Where that is not the case, or as an additional

corroboration, you can use the GRO search tool and include the mother’s maiden name as shown

below for the family of Joseph Britton and Hannah Ellison who were married in 1882.

The children were born at intervals of one to three

years.

On this basis there is an unexplained five year gap

between Arthur Britton born in 1885 and Lily Britton

born in 1890.

In the 1891 Census I see both parents and the first

three of these children.

In the 1901 Census I see the father and all six of

these children.

Arthur Britton was registered in the district of

Leeds.

Lily Britton was registered in the district of Hunslet.

Hunslet geographically is a suburb of Leeds.

To search for a possible additional child born in the

period 1885 to 1890, I used the GRO search tool

with the criteria and results shown below.

Not being sure of the registration

district, I left that blank.

The search has found two names.

The first, Ellen Britton was in a

location about 70 miles away and

can be discounted.

However, Mary Alice Britton was

registered in Hunslet, the same

district as Lily Britton, therefore I

can be fully confident that Mary

Alice Britton is a member of this

family as I’ve included the mother’s

maiden name in the search

The result is shown at the left.

Note there is a link on the screen:

‘View list of registration districts.’

Changes to the civil indexes as seen when searching using tools such as FreeBMD:

Marriage records - spouse name included (1912 onward) Birth records - mother's name included (third quarter 1911 onward) Death records - age at death (1866 to first quarter 1969)) Death records - date of birth in death entry (second quarter 1969 onward)

Case Study 3

Eli Charles Walter and Ada Louisa Racey were married in 1894. From the censuses up to 1911, I had found 12 children. The final child on the 1911 census was seven weeks old. To look for more children I used FreeBMD as that can search on the mother’s name from third quarter 1911 onward.

The equivalent search on the GRO engine currently only runs up to 1916 (at March 2017).The search criteria used and the results achieved are shown below.

To explain the absence of Mary Alice

Britton from the 1891 census, I did a

search in the death index.

The age at death is given as three

years, which appears to be

inconsistent with the birth record.

I searched again for births, but could

find no other Mary Alice Britton with

mother’s name of Ellison, going back

seven years.

Sometimes the age at death in

months was transcribed as years.

I looked at the image of the index

(shown below) and found the age

given as zero. Birth in the December

quarter 1887 – death in the March

quarter 1888. So three months old,

not three years old at death.

Therefore I am confident that I have

the correct details and have now

added this daughter to the Britton -

Ellison family in Family Tree with

Mary Alice Britton dying in infancy

and only the ‘sealing to parents’

ordinance being needed.

The family lived in

Hungerford and that

district was selected.

The start date was from

the third quarter in 1911

to a date well past the

normal child bearing age

of the mother.

Both parents’ surnames

were entered. The

child’s first name was

left clear so that the

search could find all the

children in this period.

The results show an

additional five children

to be added to my

family tree.

Case Study 4

Finding a marriage record 1912 and later. This is relatively simple as the spouse name is in the index.

I entered the surname and

first name of the husband,

plus the surname of the

wife.

Then added a date range.

One matching entry was

found.

I can click the page

number (759) to show

more details – as seen at

the foot of this page.

This shows two marriages

which were on the same

page in the register, listed

alphabetically by surname

– the spouses are not

necessarily listed together.

Each marriage is shown

twice with the full name of

each person followed by

the surname of the spouse.

For the marriage I’m

interested in, it’s easy to

determine that the wife’s

first name was Winnie.

Depending on the time

period and circumstances

there can be four, six or

eight lines, i.e. two, three

or four marriages.

If there is an odd number

of lines, it can only be that

one spouse is missing. In

that case, if you know the

spouse details, try a

search using that spouse

to see whether you can

determine the cause of

the problem, e.g. volume

or page number

unreadable on the image

that was indexed.

Case Study 5

Finding a marriage record prior to 1912. The name of the spouse is not given in the index, but you are given a choice of possibilities and just need some other evidence, for example, from a census which contains the spouse’s first name, in order to make a decision.

I entered the name of

the husband, the

registration district and a

date range for the

marriage.

The marriage was found,

but this time there is no

spouse name.

However, I can click on

the page number to see

who else is listed on this

page.

This result tells me that

John Brittain’s wife was

either Jane Hampshire or

Frances Ann Hargreaves.

The 1861 Census gives his

wife’s name as ‘Frances A.’

Therefore I can be confident

that her surname was

Hargreaves.

I can order the correct

marriage certificate if still

needed.

Notes on the GRO search tool

If you set the year range to +/- 2 years, you are actually searching a five year span. For example, if you type 1850 with +/- 2 years, you are actually searching 1848 to 1852 inclusive.

A strategy to look for missing children could be to start searching with the closest year ending in 0 or 5 before the parents' marriage. Try every five years for male children, until the end of the mother's childbearing years or the death of one of the parents. Then repeat the process for possible female children.

This is not a fool-proof system as it is still possible to have families with exactly the same parents’ names in the same registration district. You could also look for these families in the censuses and consider the timing of births of other children which are recorded there to determine to which family any new child belongs.

Sources for purchasing certificates

As well as ordering certificates from the GRO, you can also contact the register office for the area of the country in question. They may perform a hand search for you if you tell them what you know. If they are not successful in finding the record you want and issuing a certificate, you may receive a refund. Check the current situation and cost with the office in question. You can locate a register office here: https://www.gov.uk/register-offices or http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/civreg/RegOffice/RegOffice2

Guidance on when to purchase certificates

Cost is always a consideration and needs to be justified. You may want to develop a plan to help you decide when to purchase certificates. Here’s a plan to consider:

1. Will a certificate prove a relationship that can’t be determined by searches of other records? 2. Will it lead to performing ordinances for a family member? 3. Will it prevent duplicate Temple work?

How to enter birth dates in Family Tree (from the civil indexes)

If you just have the quarter that a birth was registered (March, June, September, December) and you want to enter the birth date as accurately as possible, you can use the following format on Family Tree:

from 20 November 1880 to 31 March 1881

This would be correct for a birth registered in the March quarter of 1881. The birth could actually have taken place from 20 November 1880 (since they had 42 days in which to register) to the end of March 1881. If you also have a christening date, then it would limit the latest that the birth date could have been.

Family Tree also accepts as standard, entries like: about January 1881

In the Reason This Information Is Correct field, you could enter the volume and page numbers together with the district, quarter and year. In the Source - Notes field you might want to add what criteria you used to search for the record, e.g. mother’s maiden name etc.

Alternative to civil marriage certificates

Where Parish records of marriages have been indexed, you may be able to obtain the full details of the

marriage (the same as appears on a civil marriage certificate) by searching on Ancestry or FindMyPast.

This is a welcome cost saving, assuming you are already subscribed to these providers.

Reproduction of certificates on websites

Guide for the reproduction of Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates in Family Tree: http://ldschurch-

leeds.org/reproductionofbmdcertificates.pdf

Less is More

You may have heard this phrase in the past for other subjects. In the case of researching your

ancestors using search engines, the less criteria you enter, the more results you’ll get.

For example, if you don’t include a registration district in the GRO search tool, it will return matching

entries from all over the country. Then it is a matter of your judgement to decide which ones are

relevant. However this kind of approach will pick up a family that has moved between registration

districts or where the names of districts have changed or districts have merged over time.

It is not uncommon to see surname changes as we travel back in time through the generations for our

families. So if you don’t get the result you expected, you could try a variation of the family name. An

alternative is to let the search tool look at possible alternatives for you. In the case of the GRO search

tool, the default for names is ‘Exact Matches Only.’ But click the down arrow at the right of the field

and you are offered a number of variations. If you don’t get a result at first, try these variations.

However this is where the ‘More’ comes in. With less restrictive searches, you can get several pages of

results, needing more time to examine them.

For some search tools such as FreeBMD, you can enter wild cards. The ? symbol can represent a single

letter and the * symbol can represent any number of letters. If you are getting few or no results, try

entering different combinations of the ‘facts’ you know and see what else you can find.

For surnames you could try a combination of the parents’ names and possibly with them hyphenated

as well. For example a child could have been registered as ‘John Copley-Smith’ where the father’s

surname name was ‘Copley’ and the mother’s surname was ‘Smith.’

General Advice

The purpose of this document has been to show you some possibilities for your research. At first, all

these possibilities may seem complex and a little overwhelming. The answer is to try it step by step

and keep a note of your results as you go along, so that you don’t waste time by repeating your

research exactly the same when you come back to it a week or a month later.

Please remember, you can have lots of fun doing your family history. So make sure you enjoy it and

know that you’re not alone. Help is there when you have done your best with the records you can find.

Perhaps some patience will be required as well, for more indexing to be done and extra records to

come online in the future. Never give up.

The following images illustrate birth, marriage and death certificates and are from the

GRO website.

Try this link for a comprehensive explanations of certificates:

http://www.dixons.clara.co.uk/Certificates/indexbd.htm

I hope to create and publish similar guides for Scotland and Ireland. Also some hints and tips for using

the Censuses. If you have anything written on these subjects that you feel will be useful for other

researchers, please let me know.

Well done for getting this far. Please send your corrections or suggestions for improvement to:

steve@ldschurch-leeds.org

Publication date: 4th March 2017.