Genealogy Chat

I have found 2 birth reg, same 1st name and middle initial, same birth year, place and numbers, it also gives Mothers Maiden name, on the other one surname is same as Mothers Maiden Name, I cannot find a marriage for the parents either. heeeeeeelp please.
:-S

If it's not a person who is still alive, do you want to give details?

Seems possible birth re-registered after mother's marriage to baby's father.

Not sure if he is still alive, but would the birth reg in both instances be the same? And I haven't found a marriage for the parents.

The parents were probably not married at the time. If the father attends the registration his name could be used, but the child would also be included with the mother's surname. Even though it appears twice, it is just one registration.

Does that mean then that the Mother registered him in her Maiden name and within the same quarter married the Father and then re registered him in Fathers surname.

If I sent for cert would it state that it was re registered, it was in the 1920s by the way.

ZZzzz - no, they may have married at any time after the baby's birth, but the original birth registration would have been amended.

Why don't you look up the marriage of the parents to get the timescale?

The parents may never have married.

The deciding factor is the father being present at the registration.

If the mother registered the child alone, he would have just had her surname.

If both parents, though unmarried, attend the registration then he would have the father's surname, but would appear in the index under both names.

Thank you both, I think his parents didn't marry after all but had other children.

I have found illegitimate children before where the parents later married but never with 2 registrations, but that was in the late 1800s, different times different methods me thinks.

Anyway I'm on a roll now :-D thanks again.

ZZzz - there aren't 2 registrations. There's just one rego, and just one b.cert. If you look at a b.cert pre-1969q2, then you'll see there is no column that specifies what the child's surname is. There's a col for "Name, and surname of father, and one for "Name, surname, and maiden surname of mother", so if a kid is rego'ed with parents with difft surnames, then of course there should be 2 entries in the GRO index, one under each surname, but both pointing to the same b.cert.

mgnv, why would there be 2 registrations? I'm curious as I've a family in my direct line where the children are double registered.

Its all down to inheritance!

If the parents aren't married to each other, then the child is rego in the mother's surname (that of her husband if she was married to someone else) with her maiden name (after 1911) given. Or with only the maiden name if unmarried.

If the father went with her to acknowledge paternity, then the child would be registered twice - as above AND in the father's surname and mother's maiden name.

Example

John mother was Ann Brown, but she had/was married to George White.
John was the biological son of Brian Cox.

So John would be registered as
John White mmn Brown
John Cox mmn Brown.

I've just checked the reg for the son of an old school friend. She has since divorced number 1, but hasn't married the father of her son.

Divorced woman now-a-days often revert to their maiden name....since anyone can call themselves what they like as long as it is not to defraud, it could be possible for a woman to use only her maiden name to register a birth.

Briefly, a load of cobblers.

If two people sign the same rego, there aren`t two regos.
Normally, 5 people sign a marr rego - but it still counts as just one rego, and, like the birth example, it`s all done on the same rego form,under the same rego entry number.

My father-in-law married a widow. There are 4 entries in the GRO index for this marr.
John Smithh m Brown or van Ress
Mary Brown m Smith
Mary van Rees m Smith (indexed under V and under R - it really shouldn`t be under R).
In spite of this there was only 1 marr rego, and the m.cert had all the names on it.

OK. May be my previous post should have said listed/transcribed twice. I knew what I meant - lol

The GRO index is just that, an index. Just like any book, there can be several entries in the index referring to a single item in the book itself.

My father's death is recorded four times in the index, but he only died the once.....!