Genealogy Chat

I've been tearing my hair out the last few days trying to find the marriage date, and therefore maiden name, of my great great grandmother. i knew that her christian name was Eliza Frances and that she married a John Alfred Price. I knew that they lived in Middlesex and their first child was born in 1869. i searched ancestry marriage index but there were too many John Prices to sift through. After following a tip from this board that on freeBDM you can type in the spouses first name to narrow down the search, i tried this but had no luck. the dates were either way too early or after 1871. I then searched for all Eliza Frances born in 1847, took note of their surnames then typed them in the marriage index. One showed up that seemed to fit the rough date and location. Eliza Frances Morgan, June 1868 Kensington. I then search marriages for John Alfred Price. one came up - June 1868 Kensington! So why didnt they appear together in the same search? When i looked at the original image i found that the page number for Eliza had been mistranscribed both on Ancestry as well as freebdm. The search for Eliza had shown up as page 215 instead of page 315! the moral of this story is (1) always look at the original image (2) genealogy requires a great deal of detective work and you may have to resort to some very strange methods to find what you're looking for (3) never give up!

Absolutley! Congrats :) Isn't it great when you finally work things out? Hard work, but no-one ever said this hobby was easy!

thanks orangeblossom :) i'll be able to sleep tonight now! until the next problem arises, anyway, lol

I agree - you have to look at the original image. I've had this happen twice where I haven't been able to find a marriage and then discovered the page number was mistranscribed. It is satisfying when you find the mistake, locate the correct page and therefore link the two partners in the marriage. It seems ancestry and freebmd use the same data as I found the same mistakes on both. Helen

The data in the partial indexes on Ancestry is the same as FreeBMD. The FreeBMD transcriptions are transferred to Ancestry and FreeBMD is updated more often than Ancestry so it can save time to search in FreeBMD first. If you find anything mistranscribed on FreeBMD, you can ask for a correction to be done, to help future searchers. Pam

thanks for the advice, Pam i've just submitted the correction to freebmd :)

Thats what I like to hear, someone with determination and tenacity. As freebmd is still under transcription it may just be they havent done that page I guess. Just lets bless everyone of those volunteers who have given so much effort and time for our benefit.

Agreed - the transcribers do a great job. I've just submitted my correction of p.1696 to 1096 - part of the 0 is missing and it looks like a 6. I only knew it was wrong because no-one else is on p.1696 (the page numbers don't go up that high!) and I found the correct spouse on p.1096. The other one was where the page hadn't been transcribed yet and I had to look up the original page on the complete BMD index - fortunately I knew the surname so could find it quite easily. Helen

Thankyou Shelly! Your original thread made me look again for a marriage that has eluded me for months. I had trawled BMD thoroughly (I thought) to no avail but last week after reading of your success I decided to try again. I began to go through all years 1851 - 1861 looking for Caroline Moss. In 1856, 3rd quarter the page is missing, don't ask why I didn't notice before but hey I've found out now and when I checked that year and quarter for her spouse, William Bown, there he was! The search was complicated by them marrying in a totally different part of London, I've no record of either of them there before or after marriage. I received the certificate yesterday and it's definitely them, so thanks again for inspiring me and thanks also to those who had looked on BVRI etc for this marriage for me! Never give up! Sue