Genealogy Chat

Is it just me or does anyone else find that when they buy certificates, they come with 'duff' information?..... I'm getting quite a collection now.

My parents' marriage cert. has wrong name for my paternal grandfather. Grandparents marriage cert.took ages to find as it was wrongly indexed because grandfather's surname is wrong, as is his father's. Another cert. has Janet, the bride, with a father also shown as Janet ( should be James) Latest one bought shows the groom as son of Edwin Henry, - there wasn't one . It should be Edward Henry. The worst one I didn't actually buy, it was passed on by the daughter of a man, who spent the first 12 years of his life as a 'girl' until his parents made a declaration that he was a boy. Do you have these problems? Gwyn

Hubby has a few in his tree, but me......Nope! What sort of duff were you thinking of? Hubby has a woman trying to explain the spelling of her maiden surname and ends up with two previous surnames on her son's birth cert. Hubby's gg-grandfather is a witness at his sons wedding. The vicar wrote his name down wrong in the father column, so dad also signs the cert with the wrong name (To keep it tidy??! It is def him!) Merry

Merry I recall that your husband has family from the same area as some of my lot (Beaulieu) PLEASE don't tell me that when I do eventually find the parents for my Henry born c. 1813, there is every chance that the information will not be truthfully recorded. Gwyn

Gwyn There are so many guesses, mistakes and downright lies in the information provided by my relatives in living memory that I dread to think of the errors that I don't pick up on earlier certificates. I take the details as being 'correct' on a birth certificate, but know that they are as subject to error as anything else. If a man were William John Smith on his birth certificate, but John William Smith for army record, marriage death and burial, do I have four mistakes, or one?

Gwyneth, firstly, I would not class that Edward / Edwin thing as a mistake because my tree, and my partner's, are littered with people who couldn't make up their minds whether they were called Edward, Edmund or Edwin. Those names seem to have been more-or-less interchangeable. I have a marriage certificate which my grandfather got from the GRO in the 1970's which is absolutely full of mistakes, because it was copied out by hand from the GRO copy rather than photocopied or however they do it now. Thank goodness I wasn't given that copy before I ordered a new copy! If you want the fewest errors, I suppose the best thing to do is to get a photocopy of the original certificate from the local register office where the event was registered, but not all local register offices can supply these, so if they can't, the next best is the GRO as they almost always give you a photocopy-kind-of-thing of their copy of the cert nowadays. If it is a marriage cert, then as long as it was a church wedding you should be able to get a look at the cert in the parish records. But, even if you get a copy of the original certificate there can still be errors. For instance, many people could not read and write so they could not check if what was on the cert was correct. Some people did not know their exact age, or lied about their age to get married before the age of 21 without their parents' consent. Some people pretended they were married when registering a baby's birth. People registering a death might not know all the required facts about the deceased person. And there are many other reasons for certs being inaccurate that I could go on all day, but won't! Kate.

Gwyn.....Don't worry, those events were in the metropolis of Southampton......the mum who tried to explain her surname was from Beaulieu though, and the father-of-the-groom was her husband and he was from Huntingdonshire, but his accent would have been changed by nearly 20 years spent in St Pancras, so goodness knows what he might have sounded like!! Merry

I think most of the mistakes are down to the person taking down the information not hearing properly. Edwin and Edward are easily mistaken for each other if you are hard of hearing. The Janet instead of James, could just be someone not concentrating properly, or, if the certificate is one hand written recently, just a mistake by the registrar. You can always ring and check. When I bought my father's birth certificate it had his christian names correct (William Vaughan) but then had his father's name as the same thing, even though I knew his father's name was William Richard. When I phoned and asked the registrar to check the entry, she apologised and said it was her mistake. If I hadn't known the correct name for my grandfather, I would have been searching for the wrong person when going backwards with my research. Kath. x

Thank you for your replies. I have sat in Record offices for hours and can realise that clerks must sometimes get tired of writing all those names and mistakes can happen. My parent's marriage certificate is their original 'take home' copy and has my grandfather shown with the same names(3) as my Dad, instead of his own(1) I knew my grandfather's correct name so it was not really a problem That grandfather has had his name split in half on his own marriage cert. and is logged under the latter half, with a father with the same wrong surname. It actually is the same on the parish register but did you check everything when YOU signed? Same grandfather's mother, Ann, was born 1846 and I ordered her birth certificate to confirm that her maiden name was BROCKHURST. .... Some hope. It shows her mother as Rebecca GREEN, ( but Ann's brother has her logged as Rebecca BROCKHURST) No idea where the GREEN comes into it and I rang the office local to the event and they confirmed the names from their own register. I'll plod on researching, but I'm not sure that certificates are helping me very much. Gwyn

Jenny, Have you found your Thomas Saville on the 1901 census? What was his occupation and who was his wife? Merry

Jenny.....It's OK, I found him on the 1901 census (on the original page there is no niece and nephew....they are stepdau and stepson!): Alf Cranvill abt 1889 Edmonton, Middlesex, England Nephew Tottenham Middlesex Lizzie Cranvill abt 1895 Edmonton, Middlesex, England Stepdaughter Tottenham Middlesex Richard Cranvill abt 1891 Edmonton, Middlesex, England Nephew Tottenham Middlesex Elizabeth Sarile abt 1868 Peertener, Middlesex, England Wife Tottenham Middlesex Thomas W Sarile abt 1867 West Hythe, Kent, England Head Tottenham Middlesex Thomas Savill abt 1899 Tottenham, Middlesex, England Son Tottenham Middlesex William Savill abt 1901 Tottenham, Middlesex, England Son Tottenham Middlesex Hmmmmm not straightforwad before that! I don't want to stir things, but sometimes children are told someone has died when they have actually just left the family home. (thinking of the 1908++ death that's missing) Merry

Jenny If you think the Thomas born in West Hythe is yours, send me a PM, if you would like me to check for a baptism locally. It's a really small place, even today. The registration district of Elham covers that area at that time. Gwyn

I have the same problem Gwyneth, only with surnames. The name started as Ingleby, my g.grandfather was married as Ingledew, his son was born as Hingley, his first marriage was as Hingleby, his second marriage as Ingleby, my mother was brought up as Ingleby. All because they couldn't read or write, and or course the accents would be different as they moved about. Jean