Genealogy Chat

i have found an entry for James Gray who was born in Rawcliffe near Goole York. The IGI states he was baptised on 17th April 1858 but i can't find his date of birth. Every time i've tried sending for a certificate it comes back either wrong place or wrong parents. All i know for sure is that his dad's name was John. Jane

Jane Treat the IGI with a pinch of salt and always double check the data via the census, Parish records or the BMD indexes. Like everything else that has been transcribed mistakes can be made along the way. Not forgetting that the Baptism date was not always just after the child was born. Sometimes the person was baptised just before a marriage or the parents waited until they had a few children and had them all baptised at the same time. Vera Manchester

Jane Be guided by what Vera has to say - she has given such brilliant advice to so many of us. I found IGI is O.K. as a guide, but with all the sites available, always double or even treble check. If you reguest certificates from the relevant Registration Office, giving as much family info. as possible, many will 'phone you to check if anything does not tally; they don't just send any old certificate and pinch your money. Enjoy :)

Thanks for your help Vera. The date checks out with census entries and the age given on his marriage certificate. So i think he was born around 1857/8. I just wonder whether Hannah as quoted in the IGI was not his mother or perhaps he wasn't born in Rawcliffe. I will have to do some creeping and see if i can find someone with access to Rawcliffes records to check it out for me. Jane

Thanks for your help Deborah and Hazel. Yes i have also found out that you must not take what information is in other peoples trees as gospel. In some of the Chorley/Cheek family trees,i've looked at i have found some discrepencies. Although i must admit to some of the errors being mine. Jane

How can you tell if its an entry from other peoples trees? Regards Margaret

As mentioned above all LDS info should be double checked. Treat it as a guide. I have mentioned this in other posts. This is a big worry as people are d/loading this info and taking it as true. This then perpetuates the myth. The internet is a wonderful tool for genealogy but you cannot do your 'tree' in 10 minutes. If you dont believe me then type 'Adam and Eve ' into a search engine and see how some of our 'cousins' have traced their family back to them. Back to LDS, the idea of it was for members to find their families so that they could then be baptised into the church. Some families had neither the money or the resources to research and made calculated guesses. So beware. Generally batch numbers beginning with C or M are reliable but must be double checked. A numbers and those without initials are extremely suspect. Even the 1881 census is inaccurate in parts!! You should never put somone in your tree until you have evidence either from certificates or parish records. Having said all this LDS is a wonderful tool to point you in the right direction. Hope this helps, John

Can I add to what William has said. Please use your local LDS centre they are usually a nice bunch of people and contrary to popular opinion they will not try to indoctrinate you. I have found them very helpful in the past John