Genealogy Chat

hi i am having trouble working out what to do , i am wanting to find details about my mother , i only have her christian and maiden name and it has been suggested that i look at the GRO. Can anyone help me ?

Julie The GRO stands for General Register Office. It collects registration details of births, marriages & deaths from all the registration districts in England & Wales. It publishes indexes - separate ones for B, M & D. Until very recently, these were arranged in quarters - Mar/Jun/Sep & Dec. So for example, if you were born at the end of Dec 1900 you might have your birth registered in Jan 1901. I think you need to narrow down as much as possible the dates you need to look at - how early would she have been born? There are 3 ways to find 20th century birth references: 1) Pay and search online at 1837online*.com. (remove * first) The indexes are only searchable by first 3 letters of surname only. So if your mum was called THOMSON - you'd have to look at THO pages which would have Thomas and Thompson first. 2) Look at the index on microfiche. These are held in record offices and also some public libraries. 3) Have a day in London at the Family Record Centre and look in their impressively big index books. Once you have found the ref, it will look something like WHITE, SNOW 1960 Mar, Wonderland 17g 321 The first bit is the name, then the year & quarter, then the registration district, then the volume and page. You will need all these to order from the GRO which you can do online. Hope this helps. nell

Just to add to what Nell has explained so clearly, if you do then order a birth certificate that will give you your mum's date and place of birth her parents' names and mother's maiden name and occupation of father. Then you will be able to search for a marriage of her parents and then her births ........... and you'll be totally hooked on this hobby of ours. Good hunting Judith

I have found that a good shortcut, once you have this information, is to contact the Register Office local to the event. They are often much quicker at despatching certs and are also cheaper. Some will undertake searches, some wont, some will deal on line, some wont, its the luck of the draw. I have also developed a crafty technique for weeding out the completely wrong certs without actually paying for a search or a certificate. A registry office will only send you a certificate which matches the information you give them, so when Im not sure, I quote the reference number and then say something like "his father was George" or he was a plumber by trade,etc. Of course, this means you already have to know something about the person, but I have found it very helpful when I have two people of the same name.