The GRO are trialing a new system of ordering English and Welsh birth & death certificates. These will arrive via email as a PDF within five days (which for those of us outside the UK will be exceptionally speedy). They will be uncertified e.g. you can't use them for identity proof, but perfect for family history research and only cost £6 each. There is a limit on the trial of three weeks or 45,000 certificates and it will be interesting to see which comes first? Ordering a PDF So starting with a death certificate for Joseph Goodyer. The addition of the age at death before 1868 gives me more confidence that this is my Joseph Goodyer dying in 1840 aged...
The mother's maiden name appearing on the GRO England birth indexes prior to 1911 is helping to locate children and solve mysteries. I knew from the 1901 census that Edward Hannam was married to Martha and that they appeared to have five children Source: Findmypast.com.au - Archive reference RG13 / Piece number 188 / Folio 5 / Page 2 Hannam is one of those surnames that has lots of variants, both from how it is pronounced and written down and how all the "ups and downs" in the middle of the name are transcribed. It was relatively easy to find Edward William Hannam marrying Martha Maud North in the September Quarter 1891 in the Holborn Registration district. That did however mean that the...
The registration of births, deaths and marriages started in July 1837 in England and Wales. The indexes to these entries have been available for researchers on microfiche and online on various websites (Findmypast, Ancestry, The Genealogist, FreeBMD) for many years and some of us may have even lifted heavy books from shelves in London to view the indexes. As of today however the indexes for births and deaths are also available online via the GRO website www.gro.gov.uk. As a bonus they also included additional information for historical births and deaths. For births, mother’s maiden names have been available on the indexes from 1911, these are now available prior to 1911 on the GRO index (where possible). This will be helpful...
It's a two way streak, when you research a family, where they live is part of their history; likewise when you research a house the people that live there create part of the houses story. As part of Heritage New Zealand's seminars on Research Your House, I got the chance to give the perspective of the family historian. The talk covered a number of sources to find out information about your house by tracing the people that lived in the house. A handout can be downloaded from here. As part of a team delivering the seminar's I didn't go into the land records that are available from Archives New Zealand. But there is some information about Historic Land Records on the LINZ...
From starting the research as 100% Kiwi, if we look at Jason’s 16 great great grandparents, he is now 7/16 (44%) Scottish, 5/16 (31%) Irish and is 1/16 (6%) English, Welsh, Swedish and Danish. All of these ancestors made the journey to New Zealand to start new lives and are what make us who we are. Backwards & Forwards We’ve concentrated on going backwards, but it’s also good to trace the family forwards to find cousins who may have been the ones to inherit family stories and information. We often inherit photograph albums of unnamed photos. We know that they are family, but don’t know which family they are. By working together with other cousins there is the chance...
