Genealogy Chat

Can anyone help me with this?
I am looking for my 1st cousin who was born to my unmarried aunt. He was apparently not registered in her name but the father's. He was bought up mainly by our grandparents who are now deceased. I have his mothers maiden name. Please can anyone tell me how to fnd his registered surname at birth and/or any ideas of how to trace him?
Further to the replies below: I have checked the electoral roles for the time he may have been at my granparents address but it seems he left before he was eligable to vote. I do not know where he was born and only an approximate year.

If your cousin was still living at your grandparents' home when he became eligible to vote you might find him on an electoral roll. I've not gone down that avenue of enquiry myself, so I don't know where you would find old electoral rolls - but the appropriate county record office seems the obvious place to start.

do you know his first name, dob and where born?

If so you could look on Ancestry for the quarter nearest to his birth, look for a first name,. If the birth is after 1912 then the mother's maiden name will be there also.

If he was born towards the end of a quarter eg March, June, Sept or Dec then the birth may be in the following quarter.

Electoral Rolls are usually held in nearest large library. if you have an address then the library will probably do a look up for you for a small charge.

Jonesey, I'd forgotten you can search on first names. Just done my own on Ancestry so know it works.

Jan, if you haven't got Ancestry and don't want to put a name on here, especially if your cousin still living, send me a PM with details and I'll see what I can find.

Jennifer

Lets do a worked example - suppose I know my aunt's name was Mary Green, my cousin's name was John, and he was born in Southampton in the 1930s. Well, I can do a free search on Ancestry, and it gives me:

Exact Search Results - England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916-2005
You searched for John born in Hampshire in 1930[-1940 w mmn=Green]

John E Cotton mm year city Hampshire, Berkshire [1931]
John W Green mm year city Hampshire, Berkshire [1931]
John W Gregory mm year city Hampshire, Berkshire [1933]
John M Parsons mm year city Hampshire, Berkshire [1937] ****
John E Smith mm year city Hampshire, Berkshire [1933]
John W Wright mm year city Hampshire, Berkshire [1930]

Now, the earlier 5 births are transcribed on FreeBMD, but suppose I decide it's John Parsons. I can change the years on my search to pin down his y.o.b., which I did, and found it's 1937. But then I noticed if I hover over his view image symbol, or actually click on it, I get to see an enormous long URL (in the meantime Ancestry's trying to get me to subscribe, but I just backout).

Embedded in the middle of the URL, I spot the image ID - iid%3dons_b19372az-0936
I interpret this as 1937q2 page=936. Unfortunately, FreeBMD doesn't number its pages the same way this year, and it takes a bit of pritzing around to figure out I need FreeBMD page=P-0013.

Anyways, from FreeBMD's home page, I take the view images link:
http://images.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/choose.pl
and then enter successively Births-1937-Jun-P-0013
and I can read off John's GRO ref.