Genealogy Chat

One of my relatives was Gomer Thorburn born 1899. When I searched for his birth I found him in the April, May & June 1899 birth quarter.
The main thing that has confused me is that he is registered as Gomer Thorburn vol 11a & entry 885 in Neath. In the same birth quarter it shows an Alexander Hamilton Thurburn vol 11a & entry 885 and also a David George Thorburn vol 11a entry 1886. There are twins throughout my family but I thought that even twins have different entry numbers, but Gomer and Alexander have the same number.
Does anyone know what this means? :-D

probably twins but Alexander did not survive

Deaths Dec 1899 (>99%)
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Thorburn Alexander Hamilton 0 Neath 11a 565

Martin


re vol 11a entry 885


It is not ENTRY 885


it is PAGE 885 in volume 11a



so they have the same page number ................ and could thus be twins.



When you buy the birth certificate, you will find that there will be a time of birth if Gomer was a twin




sylvia

I looked at the 1911 Census for Gomer ........ and it says that his parents had been married 22 years. They had had 10 children, and 5 had died




sylvia

Surname First name(s) District Vol Page
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Births Jun 1899 (>99%)
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Hill Edith Maud Neath 11a 885
Jones Elizabeth Olwen Neath 11a 885
Rees Olwen Neath 11a 885
Rogers Gwilym Morgan Neath 11a 885
Rogers Henry James Neath 11a 885
Thomas Margaret Ceinwen Neath 11a 885
Thorburn Alexander Hamilton Neath 11a 885
Thorburn Gomer Neath 11a 885
Walters Joseph Lewis Neath 11a 885
Woodman Edith May Neath 11a 885


As Martin asks "Does anyone know what this means?"

Clearly, we've got dectuplets with different surnames.
The only other possibility I can think of is that Martin has confused "entry" and "page", not recognizing that the GRO puts 10 b.certs on a page.

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Actually, what happens now, and back then are very similar.
You have to register a birth, so you go to the nearest registery office.
If you lived in Neath RD, back then, there were subdistrict offices in several parts of the RD, e.g., Port Talbot, Margam, etc, as well as Neath.
Each local office had a births register, with entries numbered 1-500, and 5 entries per page. hen the register was full, it was sent to the superintendent in Neath, and a new rego was started. At the end of each quarter, the local registrar copied out the past quarter's births on the GRO's pages, which had 10 entries per page, and sent them to the superintendent in Neath, who checked them over, then stacked each subdistrict's returns onto one giant stack for the whole RD, and sent them to the GRO. The GRO took the stacks from each RD, and made giant stacks for each county or group of counties, and bound them into volumes (so 11a=S Wales, 11b=N Wales, etc) and indexed all the volumes.

The index ref info you'ld need to find an entry in the local RD's set of registers, and the GRO's set is quite difft.
For the local office, if you knew John Smith appeared in the 20th Port Talbot register on page 50 or entry 250, you could locate his b.cert.
For the GRO, you'ld need to know it was 1852q2 vol=11a page=877 or whatever.
The entry # wouldn't help at the GRO - there could possibly be half a dozen entry 250s from Neath - one from each subdistrict in Neath. (In 1899q2, there were 651 births rego'ed in Neath RD, spread over 67 GRO pages - pp 835-901).

Some local indexes are online - they usually index marrs by entry #, so if the church has been transcribed, you'll know who wed whom, even pre-1912 - see http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/local_bmd
As well as showing which subdistrict a birth or death happened in, they can show other info that's not in the GRO index.

This is a simple clarification

Name: Gomer Thorburn
Date of Registration: Apr-May-Jun 1899
Registration district: Neath
Inferred County: Breconshire, Glamorgan
Volume: 11a
Page: 885 (click to see others on page)

Yes, I'd definitely say Gomer and Alexander were twins (same volume and page number) and Alexander died in the December quarter of the same year.

It is only recent births that have an entry number. In the past there was just a page number and there was more than one name to a page.

Kath. x

They could have been triplets.
Try and find the deaths of the five that died.

Mary Elizabeth Thorburn abt 1896 Jan-Feb-Mar 1899 Neath Glamorganshire

Ceinwen Thorburn abt 1898 Jan-Feb-Mar 1899 Neath Glamorganshire

Alexander Hamilton Thorburn abt 1899 Oct-Nov-Dec 1899 Neath Glamorganshire

Thelma

There are two births on the same page - not three

Reggie - true, but there's another on the next page. 20% of time triplets would appear on 2 pages (later 40%, when the GRO went to 5 entries per page).

I've even seen a few cases where twins are spread over 3 pages.

Rose

Rose - I find that less than believable.
What do you think happened in those cases - that the mother schlepped down to the rego office with the twins, rego'ed the first, then decided it was all too tiring to spend another 5 mins rego'ing the second, so she left and came back a couple of days later to rego second twin - yeah, right.

mgnv,

I have no idea how it all transpired and if any schlepping was involved, because the page numbers refer to the GRO indexing system and not the local registry office. I have seen at least 2 threads. Here's one:

http://www.genesreunited.co.za/boards.page/board/living_relatives/thread/1293151

The other one had very unique surnames and mother maiden name but I didn't bookmark it.

Rose