Family Historian User Group

Hello all,
I'm wondering if anyone has encountered an entry on Find My Past that has a transcription from a Registrars Birth Index (Derbyshire 1883) with no link to a BMD record. Is it therefore possible to obtain a birth certificate (and will one exist) with just the reference number and Register office? Not come across this before but hoping someone can help.
Thanks in advance

Derek

In all likelyhood yes, one will exist, but you will need to order it direct from the Registry office concerned (or the one which inherited registers), as the GRO is a transcript of the originals sometimes entries get missed or transcribed incorrectly.

A good place for free access to some indexes is
https://www.freereg.org.uk/
and
https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/local_bmd

Ah, thank you Jane. I would not have known that. Much appreciated.

Derek

I once had a completely wrong certificate, it turned out the GRO copy had swapped the two couples, the one from the registry office made far more sense.

Be warned though to order Marriages from the local offices you normally need to know the Church or Registry office as they don't have an index in most cases, but simply access the books.

Don’t forget that a copy of the parish register entriy for a marriage contains much the same information as a GRO Certificate and is a good substitute. The availability of these is patchy, but local archive centre should have most parish registers to browse. (obviously not for registry office marriages)
Always worth a search for one, before buying an actual certificate. (FamilySearch is a good place to start, as it’s free )

I have about 150 references to the Derbyshire Registrar's index. On a number of these the GRO index refers to Registry Offices in adjacent Counties.

For example, I have a location reference in the Derbyshire Registrar's of "Reg Office Chesterfield, Sub District Carburton & Clowne" but in the GRO Birth index the Registry is given as "Worksop".

David

Ancestry and Find My Past also have lots of registers these days, but you need to use the "check the catalogue" trick to find who has what. So for example Devon is on Find My Past, but Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire are on Ancestry.

Be aware that many smaller churches still have the more recent registers in the Church, for example Evershot in Dorset still have the register for Marriages after 1837 so they are only available if you talk nicely to the Church Warden. So always use the Catalogue to check the dates available on the sites for each parish.