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If you are then sure that William and Elizabeth are John Fs parents , you could get their marriage certificate which Janey mentioned, which will give you their father's names and occupations

Marriages Jun 1906 (>99%)


Clements William Swansea 11a 1647

Martin Elizabeth Ann Swansea 11a 1647

Suzanne, just to be absolutely clear for you -- you can't find details like parents' names on line. Only their surnames, and only after 1911, in the births index.

When you are at FreeBMD, you have to read the headings to see what each of these things means:

Surname - First name(s) - Mother/Spouse/Age - District - Vol - Page
Births Mar 1917
Clements - John F - Martin - Swansea - 11a - 1902

This is how the same thing looks at the Ancestry site, which spells it all out:

Name: John F Clements
Mother's Maiden Surname: Martin
Date of Registration: Jan Feb Mar 1917
Registration district: Swansea
(Registration county: Wales)
Volume Number: 11a
Page Number: 1902

That is the information you need for ordering the birth certificate.


When searching at FreeBMD do not put *too much* information in.

For example, to find the marriage we think is his parents, just search as I have said:

marriage
surname Clements
mother's surname Martin

When you get the results, it's easy to pick out the one in Swansea between a male Clements and a female Martin.

It's something you'll need to be able to do eventually if you're going to research your own tree, so may as well get the hair-tearing over with now! ;)

i managed to find william thanks for all the information again, another thing puzzling me is when i type in clements and mccarthy births it comes up as they had 2 sons but i thought they had 3, is this informathion correct or should i be looking another way,sorry to be a pain

FreeBMD just hasn't caught up yet -- you hit the wall with that one. The births are 45, 48 and 50, and FreeBMD is a bit hit and miss for that period in the transcribing, still.

Did you notice the envelope beside the 1950 one? Normally that means a note has been attached by someone -- you click on the envelope to read the "postem".

In this case it makes no sense; it says:

03/10/2010 The following correction has been suggested: . The source given for this is:

and that's it. But it's dated yesterday. Was this you? ;)

im not sure what i did to be honest something about correction did come up, i was just confused because only 2 sons came up and was pretty sure there were 3 sons

I'll PM you the details of the three births.

I know what that blank postem means.

FreeBMD must be adding postems when someone submits a correction.

You clicked on the "Info" button beside the birth registration. Except that isn't for information about the particular birth, it's for information about the *transcription*. So you must have clicked on "If you have a correction to this entry, please click here." and then submitted some sort of blank correction. ;)

Just keep playing with it, it will become second nature.

thanks,im on stop at the moment until i get a certificate, maybe then i will be able to find out when my grandfathers siblings past and more info on my gr grandparents, its really frustrating cos you think you can just type something in and all the answers will magically appear but as ive discovered its not that easy lol, thank you both again for your help much appreciated x