Genealogy Chat

The local office - Knowsley apparently - holds the actual rego that your gran or whoever signed - the GRO only has a copy made by someone in the Knowsley registers office (or whatever office it was that held the rego at the time - Knowsley's a new office). The GRO will send an image of the copy they were sent, but there could be a mistranscription in making the copy. The local office will make a fresh copy for you - most local offices don't have digitalization capabilities available.

thanks Rose x

Jane,

You could try contacting Knowsley register office to get the certificate from there. Might be easier than the GRO.

http://www.knowsley.gov.uk/residents/births,-deaths,-and-marriages/copy-certificates.aspx

Rose

thank you all so much fro you advice. I have found through one of the links that my mum has 2 birth records - one is typed, and has the wrong surname. She is listed as "dane" instead of "dahl", the other one is handwritten on the bottom of register, and she is listed as "dahl" (correct name) but her mother's maiden name is incorrect (reads Saley instead of Mealey) - I think there may have been a catalogue of erroes - I have an e mail address to try and rectify mistakes made, and hopefully order her a correct birth certificate.
re query on joining date, I did message someone on genes reunited a few years ago, but I only registered officially a couple of days ago. I am officially hooked!!

If an unwed mother has a child, the b.cert will only show the mother's name unless the father gives written permission for his name to be included. This was usually accomplished by the father accompanying the mother for the initial registration. In this case, there'll be one registration with two different surnames on the b.cert. Th child can be known by either name (indeed by any surname the mother chooses). Since this is the case, there will be two entries in the GRO index (which is what FreeBMD are transcribing). Both these index entries will point to the same b.cert. (If you check any b.cert pre 1969, you'll see no surname is explicitly given to the child - it's left to be inferred from the parent's surname(s).

There are plenty of reasons why the father might not agree to being named on the b.cert, e.g., he didn't want to, he was sitting in a German POW camp at the time, or a sailor at sea, etc. So some time after the quarter's ended, he agrees to being named. This would trigger a rerego and the sort of entry you're seeing. If they later marry, then the mother can be renamed also, and this too will trigger a rerego.

This is not the only scenario, but is the most common.

If I were you, I'ld try the following:
look up your mum - so here's a fake look up on FreeBMD of Mary Smith


Births Sep 1947 (>99%)
Smith Mary Jones Abingdon 6a 5

The (>99%) means the transcription of this quarter is essentially complete
Now click on the page # link (5 here).

If I see an entry for that page of:
Jones Mary Jones Abingdon 6a 5

then that would fit with the scenario I'm describing.
Alt, try a look up of mother Mary in your gran's maiden surname (Jones in my example).

Mine says member since 2007 also MC

As far as I'm concerned I joined in 2010 when I paid money to view the records and use the boards

There is an example of a page with "late entries" here:

http://www2.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?r=192266902&d=bmd_1342207324&scan=1

(I found it on FreeBMD by searching for Smiths born in Jan-Mar 1947)

If you scroll down the page and click on the "view the original" you can download the image.

This shows a scan of the typewritten page taken from the books that were held by Somerset House.

In this example scan, there are three late entries, made in 1948, 1952 and 1971 - so when the relevant person was 1, 5 or 24 years old. Presumably the 24 year old had the entry updated when they applied for a passport, but the 1 year old and 5 year old could have had their entries updated by their parents, for whatever reason.

FreeBMD has some very detailed information about late entries here:

http://www2.freebmd.org.uk/late-entry-help.html

If you'd like to send me the details you have found.........by PM (click on my name)...................I'll have a look at the entry for you

A handwritten entry is normally just an indication that the record was missed when the list was typed up.

The simple way to order the cert is on line from the GRO

If, by some unfortunate chance, you did happen to find anything untoward........would you be able to deal with it without upsetting your mother?

And, in any case, your mother probably has her birth cert

Hello Jane, it's difficult to give an opinion without knowing what you're seeing (but obviously you don't want to post mum's details here).

Most of us use FreeBMD to search for records http://www.freebmd.org.uk

If your mum's record is on there then you can order the certificate from General Register Office (GRO) http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/

(You joined yesterday but your details say member since June 2007?)

Hi all. joined the site yesterday so a complete novice.The reason I joined, is that I could not find details of my mum's birth registration at Somerset House in London (this was a few years ago) - she was born in August 1947, and I thought it may be a nice idea to get a copy of her birth certificate for her birthday this year. Looking into original birth registration records, the entry for her birth is handwritten at the bottom of the page' Do you think that this could be significant? Have a horrible feeling that no record at Somerset House and handwritten birth registration does not quite add up? I intend to phone the 0300 123 1837 to order copy of her birth certificate and hope this will shed more light on the subject.I might be reading too much into it, but would appreciate some advice.
many thanks xxxx