Find Ancestors

You be a rank newbie indeed!

The other two names on that list --

Florence Orchard
Stanley Pippett

-- are the other two people whose marriage is recorded on the same page of the General Registry Office index. ;)

They're not connected with your people at all. The GRO just records two marriages on each page. It's a pointless sort of practice, if you ask me, but that's what they do. And before they started attaching the other spouse's surname to the listing on the page, you can't be sure who married whom without ordering the certificate. In your case, you know, but often one doesn't.

You have to order that marriage certificate -- Gregory + Baldwin (just put one name on the order form) -- to find out who the fathers were. Really! There's no magic to be worked to figure it out. The names are on the certificate, and you have to get the certificate to see them.

You might have got confused when I said "you'll see Margaret's mother's name" on the list. Margaret's mother -- Alice Baldwin. Not Alice's mother. ;)

So now you have the info:

name: George Gregory
quarter: Sep 1910
district: Wandsworth
volume: 1d
page: 959

and that is what you use to fill out the application form at:

http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/

and pay by charge card on line. If you register at the site with your email address first, you won't have to re-do all the charge card details next time you want a certificate.

And of course you'll be wanting more certificates once you get that one!

Life gets easier once you have it, though. You know their approximate ages and their father's names, and you can look for them in the censuses in 1901 and before that. Your problem has been getting names that will get you back to 1901.

Get the certificate now, and we'll start working backwards!

If the certificate shows that George's father was James, and George was 30-32 when he got married, then it looks like he was the George in that household in 1891 I copied up above. Otherwise, we'll know whom to look for.

Hi, thanks for all your help, I managed to find what I believe was the correct record and discovered that the mothers name was Florence EM orchard but on the same record it gives details of Stanley WR Pippet, not sure who he is, could he be just a witness or is he likely to be the Grooms father?

Greg

! !

You search for

births
surname: gregory
given name: margaret
1912

and you get:


Births Jun 1912

Surname - First name(s) - Mother - District - Vol - Page

Gregory - Margaret A - Baldwin - Hampstead - 1a - 1075


There are two other Margaret Gregorys in 1912, but neither has middle initial "A" -- Alice.

The name under the column "Mother" is the mother's birth surname -- Baldwin.

What were you seeing instead of that??

You may have been giving too much information. If you were searching for "Margaret Alice", that was too much information, since her birth was registered as "Margaret A".


Now I'm going to make you find the marriage!

marriages
surname Gregory
spouse's surname Baldwin
1900 to 1913


Now, I have to admit that I had somehow confused myself when I said "Just don't have any preconceived ideas about people getting married before they have kids." I don't know what I was looking at. They did marry before Margaret Alice was born. My apologies!

You're looking, in the results list of Gregory-Baldwin marriages, for a George Gregory. There's only one George Gregory in the results list for that search.

You have to click on the page number link to see who the other people on the list were. You'll see Margaret's mother's name in the list with George Gregory.

It's fun, once you get the hang of it. ;)

ok help me out here whats her surname i am struggling with bmd none of my searches come up with any results

Don't forget to report back with your findings, Greg! And if you do order the marriage cert, just post again in this thread to report George's father's name.

I'd stupidly said to search for *Arthur* Gregory marrying Alice -- I edited that to fix it, and I'm sure you knew better. ;)

Oops -- in case you're as much of a newbie as I was not so very long ago -- this is where you order the marriage certificate:

http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/

The record you find at FreeBMD will give you all the info you need to order it.

name (just name one of the spouses)
district the marriage was registered in
year the marriage was registered
quarter the marriage was rgistered
volume number
page number

-- but first, you want to click on the little spectacles icon beside the record you find, and look at the image of the actual page. You need to check that no typos were made when the transcription was done -- for instance that a 7 wasn't read as a 1, or a 3 typed as a 4, etc.

If you have any problems at all with the searching at FreeBMD, don't hesitate to ask. I'm just all about teaching people how to fish for their own ancestors these days!

Thanks for the help, we have moved on a bit further through Census records etc, will be checking out the website to get the details as you suggest, can't have you knowing my relatives name and not me LOL

So we have the parents of your Margaret:

George Gregory, Born c1882
Alice Gregory Born c1882

Except, of course, Alice's name wasn't Gregory. ;)

This is info you have from family, and not from documents? The thing is, documents like Margaret's birth cert would give you Alice's full birth name.

It's the info from *before* Margaret's birth that would help to make the connection, I think; her own marriage and death, and her parents' death, aren't going to help us, except to establish who her father was, for tracing backward, you see.

So we know what her father's name and her mother's given name and their approx birthdates were, and that's all we know.

We can look for their marriage.

As a newbie, you need to go spend some time playing at

http://www.freebmd.org.uk (edited; left out the www the first time)

Practise with this one: search for

marriages
surname: gregory
first name: arthur (Edit - George, not Arthur! getting all confused ...)
spouse's first name: alice
dates -- say 1900 to 1912

Before 1911, the results will show where the names appeared on the same page, but you can't be certain they married each other.

Unfortunately, there are a half dozen, of whom a couple at least are likely candidates. If you don't know Alice's surname, you probably can't identify the right one.

The thing is, the marriage certificate will tell you Arthur's father's name, and that's what you need, to trace him back. No magic tricks here -- you really have to get that certificate.

So you need Margaret's birth certificate, to get her mother's name, so you can find the marriage.

Look for Margaret's birth, then order the birth certificate and get her parents' names -- if you don't know her mother's name.

Oh, stupid stupid me. Margaret's mother's surname appears in the record of her birth in the GRO (without having to order the certificate), because it was after 1911 when they started doing that. ... So now I know Margaret's mother's surname, and you don't. ;)

Seriously. FreeBMD is free and fast, and you need to make friends with it to answer questions like these.

Look for her parents' marriage, once you know her mother's name.


Meanwhile, right at the beginning, I gave you info on what looked like the father of the Arthur Gregory you were talking about, James. Here's another of James's sons -- Arthur's brother -- in that 1891 household:


Name: George Gregory
Age: 10
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1881
Relation: Son
Father's Name: James
Mother's Name: Jane
Gender: Male
Where born: Hampstead, Middlesex, England

Civil Parish: Hampstead
Ecclesiastical parish: Christchurch
County/Island: London
Country: England

Registration district: Hampstead
Sub-registration district: Hampstead
ED, institution, or vessel: 1

Charlotte Breaden 86
Arthur Gregory 9
Charles Gregory 15
George Gregory 10
James Gregory 44
James Gregory 12
Jane Gregory 49


Interesting -- a son George born about 1880-1881.

But you won't know until you get George and Alice's marriage certificate whether this is your George!!!

So go find it at FreeBMD. Just don't have any preconceived ideas about people getting married before they have kids. ;)

(Oh, maybe they just registered their marriage late!)

Hi, sorry but I am very new to this, below is the exact information that I have managed to get

Great Grandmother
Margaret Alice Gregory
DOB31/03/1912 Hampstead
Parents:
Alice Gregory Born c1882 died 1944 12/03 Shillingstone Dorset, Father George Gregory, Born c1882 Death Unknown
Married to Charles Frederick Wooten
Married 01/03/1930 Islington

Any help you can provide appreciated as i said I am very new to this.

Greg

How do you want to establish the relationship, Greg, and how do you think it might be done?

Would it be something like Arthur's grandparents being Margaret's great-grandparents?

I would think that about all you could do is trace both their families back through the censuses and see whether you hit a common ancestor: whether they have ancestors who were siblings in an 1841 household or some such.

Have you identified James Gregory in the 1871 or 1861 census, for instance, and got his father's name? Traced the father back to 1841? Ditto for Margaret's paternal line?


This appears to be Arthur's father James in 1891:

Name: James Gregory
Age: 44
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1847
Relation: Head
Spouse's Name: Jane
Gender: Male
Where born: Hungerford, Berkshire, England


That's the data you need to find him in the 1851.

This is the only good match for him in 1851:


Name: James Gregory
Age: 4
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1847
Relation: Son
Father's Name: William
Mother's Name: Eliza
Gender: Male
Where born: Wantage, Berkshire, England

Name: William Gregory - James's father
Age: 26
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1825
Relation: Head
Spouse's Name: Eliza
Gender: Male
Where born: Wantage, Berkshire, England

Civil Parish: Wantage
Ecclesiastical parish: Oxford
Town: Wantage
County/Island: Berkshire
Country: England
Registration district: Wantage
Sub-registration district: Wantage
ED, institution, or vessel: 11a
Household schedule number: 14

Ann Gregory 2
Eliza Gregory 29
James Gregory 4
Sarah Gregory 4 Mo
Thomas Gregory 6
William Gregory 26


Of course you'd need his birth cert to confirm who his parents were. And then their marriage certificate to confirm William's father's name.

This looks like William in 1841:


Name: William Gregory
Age: 15
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1826
Gender: Male
Where born: Berkshire, England

Civil Parish: Wantage
Hundred: Wantage
County/Island: Berkshire
Country: England
Registration district: Wantage
Sub-registration district: Wantage

Ann Gregory 10
John Gregory 40
John Gregory 2
Sarah Gregory 45
William Gregory 15


Beyond that ... there's always the IGI.

The problem we have here is that we don't even know your gr-grmother's parents' names! Let alone her father's date of birth, or anything else you know about him. She was born after 1901, so we can't find her in a census, and have to find her father. But nobody can try to trace her father's line back from 1901, for comparison with James's line, without knowing a little something about him!

I'd just guess that if her family doesn't come from Berkshire at some point, they wouldn't seem to be connected, unless it's back in the mists.

Can anyone help identify a possible relation to me, Arthur Gregory born 1882 28th February(Hampstead) Parents were James Gregory and Jane Symmonds(maybe spelt with one m), marriage took place Apr-June 1875 and record can be found in Hampstead records vol 1a page 1089, I believe the are related to my Great Grandmother Margaret Alice Gregory born 31/03/1912 married to Charles Frederick Wootten(17/08/1908) Married 1/3/1930 and became the landlords of Bull Inn Sturminster Newton Dorset.