Discovering Missing or Elusive Ancestors and Siblings with new Indexes

How do I identify missing siblings?

I am sure that by now most of you will be aware of the new indexes made available just over a week ago by HM Passport Office aka General Register Office for England and Wales. 
These now contain important additions.  

• the age at death for early years 1837 until 1865 is now included  
• the maiden name of the mother is included on the births 1837-1915, previously the mother's maiden name had only been included in the index from the third quarter 1911. 

This addition will make it easier to find the correct birth and death for those years. I say easier for reasons I shall explain later.

There are no marriages in these new indexes and the Births and Deaths only cover a limited time span.

At the same time as launching the new indexes it was announced that a PDF pilot would start on 9th November 2016. 

This is the information from their website. 

I like many others have used this as an opportunity to look for members of family who may not have shown up on the census or have remained elusive.

Family legend from a now deceased aunt was that there had been a child who had died. I was uncertain as to whether this was a sibling of my father or paternal grandfather. Looking at the indexes and the years of birth it was more likely to be a missing great aunt or uncle but my great grandfather had several brothers.

However given the new information this is what I found.

I have ordered a copy using the new pdf service and assuming the details match I have also found a likely death in the same quarter of a child without first names recorded.

I have also ordered 3 more birth certificates with different reasons.

One of my 2xgt grandmother's was christened in 1845 in Lyndhurst, Hampshire. This is in the New Forest registration district and I have not been able to find a birth registration for anyone with her first name. 

see second entry Selina daughter of Edward and Ann Grant

The above is a copy of the christening record and she is recorded on the census records as Selina.

Below is the only entry for that same year with the maiden name of her mother. All the other children with this mother's maiden name are her siblings, including another registered as Alice Mary, I am now almost certain I have the correct registration but am awaiting the documentary proof.

The other 2 birth certificates were for children missing from the census that had been highlighted by the 1911 census. (If my first certificate is correct then my gt grandparents had forgotten to include their deceased son when they completed this census form.)

My husband's maternal gt grandparents had said that 2 of their children were deceased on the census but I had not seen them on the 1901 census and they had married on Christmas day 1891. In 1901 they had only had 1 child living with them and by 1911 all the other children were with them having been born in the intervening years. This meant that it was highly likely that the children had been born between 1891 and 1899 when their surviving sibling had been born. I had been trying to find them since I found this in the 1911 census but with a surname of WARD ruling out those still living and cross referencing with the corresponding deaths was slow going.

These are the 2 I have ordered. The one for Lilian arrived in my inbox yesterday and the names of the parents match. It also revealed another address for them.

These few I have been certain are correct but even with the mother's maiden name we may still not discover the correct person for our family.

Only this morning I was looking for possible siblings for an ancestor with the surname SMITH whose mother had the maiden name CHAMBERL(A)IN born in the Lutterworth district. A search with the maiden name included brought up several children I had not seen for the family. I decided to look for one of them born just before the 1871 census. I found her with her parents living in another village in the same registration district.

Don't think this is only true for common surnames. My husband has an ancestor with the surname CROWSON the maiden name of her mother was SPEED she was born in 1872 in the Oakham registration district. Her father had a brother who married her mother's sister both couples stayed in the district and named their daughter born in 1872 with the same first name.

So shall I say this you will find the new indexes helpful but you cannot rely on them alone to determine you have the correct individual. Hopefully others have found some missing or elusive family now that we have more information.

I have others to look for including missing siblings in a family of 22.

Please leave comments I would love to know how others have used the new indexes and the slightly cheaper copies of registrations.

WDYTYA Live 2015 at Birmingham

After many years at Olympia in central London, Who Do You Think You Are? Live made its first foray out of the capital with the event in Glasgow last August.  The Scottish event was curtailed, so some doubted the move to The National Exhibition Centre (NEC) on the outskirts of Birmingham would be a success.  The announced return to the NEC next year, on the 7-9 April 2016, suggests otherwise.  For me, Birmingham had an added bonus of visiting my Aunty Dorothy, who attended the event for the first time.

Dorothy (not in period dress) in the 1939 cafe

Dorothy and myself are different kinds of attendee.  Dorothy was more interested in the talks than the vendor stands.  She found the Workshops listing on the WDYTYA? Live website difficult to find, navigate and print. That was an obstacle to her discussion on which talks were most interesting with the two friends she invited along.  An iphone/ipad app was an innovation this year, but there was no android app or Google calendar file for download and import.  Dorothy's relaxed approach was to arrive in time for lunch, attend a couple of talks, browse a few stands and chat with people in the 1939 cafe.  She enjoyed herself so much she came again the next day.




My full time 3 days required a lot more stamina, which I enjoyed just as much as Dorothy.  My focus included networking with other professional genealogists, learning about newly available resources, and helping people on their ancestral journeys.  I particularly enjoyed spotting Strathclyde alumni badges.  I managed to squeeze in only a few talks between stints on the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) stand and Ask the Experts. 

Ask the Experts area

My time giving expert advice flew by leaving me in need of the bottled water provided between each 20 minute session.  I helped people by reading secretary hand (an old style of handwriting), explaining property tenures, demonstrating online resources and search strategies, and pointing out records housed in offline archives.  An enquirer presented a type of document I had not seen before, so I also learned something new.

Attendee exploring records at the findmypast stand, The Genealogist Tithe Record poster

An important function of an exhibition is the demonstration of products.  The big online genealogy vendors, Ancestry, findmypast, My Heritage and FamilySearch all made their websites and records available for attendees to explore.  The Genealogist promoted their Tithe Record collection with a large poster, but provided no access to their website or records at all.  That was disappointing, as I particularly wanted to see the tithe maps.  On asking a staff member showed me the website on a tablet computer.  That was even more disappointing.

'Online map' and 'digital map' to most people means Google maps, bing, or satnav.  Mapping technology is now ubiquitous and there are plenty of examples of online historical maps, including tithe maps, that make good use of the technology.  In There Be Dragons – Finding Tithe Maps for England and Wales I voiced disquiet about this company's ability to present good quality online tithe maps.  Sadly, it seems my fears have been realized.  The map I was shown was a poor quality black and white image, which I think was from microfilm.  Neither the map image nor the pin markers were georeferenced or geocoded.  In my book, that makes the markers seriously un-smart. 

General Register Office stand

My experience at the General Register Office (GRO) stand was much more fruitful.  Following the Deregulation Act passed just a few weeks ago, it is now legal for civil registration records in England & Wales to be made available in a form other than an officially certified copy.  It will be up to the minister, whoever that will be after the election, to consult and implement any changes to current arrangements.  The GRO representative told me that about half of the registers have already been scanned, which is encouraging.

WDYTYA Live 2015 was stimulating and informative.  I look forward to next year.