ordering 'real' certificates

[debsy]

Hi all, I read somewhere on this site (can't remember where tho') that certificates can be ordered from the parish or county (not sure which) rather than the GRO so that the copy is of an original certificate complete with signature. I need to order certificates from Cambridgeshire, Surrey, Lancashire, Middlesex and Essex. I need to do it online as I am living in Australia. Can anyone help me with this please?
-Deb

[Mutley]

I am not sure either. I know someone here will have the correct answer but meanwhile maybe the local Family History Societies will have parish records.

This is a list of the links you require:
http://www.my-history.co.uk/acatalog/FHS_Links.htm

[Ken Boyce]

The GRO isssues "certified copies of a certified copy of a certifciate" That is because they do not hold the registers but only the transcribed quarterly returns
In the case of Marriages the quarterly certified copy could have been certified by any holder of the incomplete marriage register By law the local district Registra could not issue certified copies as he did not legally have procession of the register.

District Offices issue "certified copies of entries" in registers held by them

copies of entries in open registers are obtained from the current holder some open (not yet filled) registers exist that go back decades

The only way to get a certificate with the original writing is if the local office issues a photocopy To my knowledge until recently the Registra was legally required to issue a written copy

I'm sure someone will correct me if I've got it wrong

[ChristineR]

Bear in mind that you will only get your ancestors signatures if they actually signed the register, a lot of trouble to go to for a cross.

I understood that the recommendation to get them from the County office was an accuracy thing - the more something is copied, the more likely it is that an error can creep in.

If the Parish registers of the church that you are interested in have been filmed by the Mormons, you can see them for yourself by ordering the film in to your nearest Family History Centre - costs about $A5 and could take a while to turn up - and the year spans for some are quite broad. There are either Parish registers or Bishop Transcripts, Parish regs are what you want. (For example, the films that I got for Harwich, Essex, were the same as what is held by the Essex Record Office)

You can search the Library Catalog here, just click on film notes to see the individual years available on each film.
http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/FHLC/frameset_fhlc.asp

Another option is to pay a researcher to investigate if the original registers are availble for copying.

Christine :)

[Pam Downes]

Hi Deb,
What you get 'locally' depends on the system used locally, if you can follow that piece of logic. :) :confused:
For instance, Lincolnshire registration services have been centralised in one office and I understand that they now issue photocopies from the original registers.
The last time I ordered a certificate from a non-centralised office in Norfolk, it was either a hand-written or type-written copy.
As Christine has said, the advantage of ordering from the local office is that there is less chance of a transcription error, even if it's not a photocopy of the original entry.
Unless you know the church/chapel/register office in which a marriage took place, in most cases you can't order that certificate from a local office because it's impossible to look through all the registers for that quarter until the marriage is found. Though if you give the local office a choice of say two possibles I think most offices will look for you. There's some details about ordering certificates which you might find useful to know at http://www.dixons.clara.co.uk/Certificates/bmdcerts.htm
(It is a little out of date regarding the fact that only Birmingham has computerised indexes.)
Not every local registrar's office will issue historical BMD. As Barbara Dixon says when talking about searching for a marriage certificate "...but the job of the registrars is registrations and current marriages! Family history must take second place to all other aspects of registration...."
Not every local office is equipped to deal with requests, including payment, online.
Most of Cambridgeshire is.
http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/community/bmd/Camdex/
A lot of Lancashire is
http://www.lancashirebmd.org.uk/
For Surrey, Middlesex and Essex you will have to deal with the individual registration offices. For a list of the 'old' registration districts
http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/districts/index.html
Check if your town/village has been transferred to another district by referring to the notes column, then scroll down to the bottom of the page to where it says 'registers now held', and click on that link for the address, phone number and (sometimes) email address.
Pam

[Peter Goodey]

I need to order certificates from Cambridgeshire, Surrey, Lancashire, Middlesex and Essex. I need to do it online as I am living in Australia.

In that case, my advice would be that you'll find it much more convenient to order from the GRO. If you have a specific pressing reason in a particular case for doing something else, decide how to approach it depending on the specifics of the case.

[debsy]

Thankyou everyone for your replies to my query. I am starting to think the GRO is the way to go. I have already bought about 10 certificates from them. They just seem to take forever to get here when one is waiting at the letterbox! It takes 3 - 4 weeks from the day I order online but I expect that is the quickest I will get them from anywhere.
I might have a look at the Cambridgeshire and Lancashire site though, thanks Pam.
- Deb

[uksearch]

SNIP
I might have a look at the Cambridgeshire and Lancashire site though, thanks Pam.
- Deb

I can certainly recommend the Lancashire site. I know it's all a matter of personal choice and experience, but I only use Southport as a last resort.

UK

[Ken Boyce]

Coming back to the question of the original signatures on a certificate and having never personally registered a birth or death in the UK what signatures actually appear on the birth and death entries in the Register

Regards

[Neil Wilson]

If I remember correctly, the person registering the birth signs it and the registrar. It is even longer since I registered a death but seem to remember signing something.

[Guy Etchells]

As Barbara Dixon says when talking about searching for a marriage certificate "...but the job of the registrars is registrations and current marriages! Family history must take second place to all other aspects of registration...."

Pam

Muffles explosive scream.
No, No, No, NO!

The job of a registrar is to register Births, Marriages & Deaths and to provide access to the registers to anyone and everyone who wishes access to those registers at ALL times when the register is open.
The registrar MUST also provide a copy of any entry from any register in his/her keeping.

He/she has no choice in the matter he/she has no discretion to favour a current registration over a request for a historical certificate. Those that do are breaking the law.

The current Act of Parliament states the duties clearly
Births and Deaths Registration Act, 1953.-
"32. Every registrar shall at any time when his office is required to be open for the transaction of public business allow searches to be made in any register of births or register of deaths in his keeping, and shall give a copy certified under his hand of any entry therein, on payment of the following fees respectively, that is to say..."

If any such lazy registrar refuses to do their duty and provide a certificate on demand report them to the Registrar General and ask for them to be replaced with someone who is willing to do their duty.
Cheers
Guy

[suedent]

It can sometimes be worthwhile to view the original marriage entry in a parish register as opposed to the certificate from the GRO.
My great uncle was indexed as Mcalee & I only managed to find the marriage at all because I knew his wife's maiden name. Indeed when I got the certificate it said Mcalee and my grandfather & great grandfather apparently signed Mcalee.

Recently when transcribing Pelynt marriages I came across the original & as I expected they had all signed A'Lee.

In this case it wasn't that important as I knew what the certificate should have said. However if a surname on a certificate was a critical piece of information a blunder like that could have meant many wasted hours of searching.

[debsy]

thanks for your help everyone. I think I will stick with GRO for now as I have been to the Lancashire and Cambridgeshire sites but the names I am looking for don't come up.
- Deb

[PatriciaBuckley46]

Most of my family is in Yorkshire but some is in Leicestershire and others.

How do I find the website and phone number to order specific certificates? Are they 7.00 still?

[suedent]

I use the GRO's online ordering service

The drawback is that if they can't find a certificate you only get a part refund. For example if the parents names don't match on a birth certificate.

Ordering direct from the local office is better if you don't have the GRO reference number or are uncertain which certificate you want. (eg. there are a few possible options in any given quarter or year). If they can't find the certificate you want they'll give a full refund.

I generally use Genuki to find the addresses of individual offices.

[Peter Goodey]

How do I FIND the GRO site for the districts I need?

There is only one GRO website for all of England and Wales

http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/

[PatriciaBuckley46]

In the case of both Edward Buckley b. Oct 1846 and Elizabeth Taylor b. Mar 1845, I don't know their parents names but I know the kids names. One of the kids is still alive but doesn't remember her grandparents names, dob or anything else according to her son. Thank goodness she remembers her parents' names so I got back this far

[arthurk]

Most of my family is in Yorkshire but some is in Leicestershire and others.

How do I find the website and phone number to order specific certificates? Are they 7.00 still?

The Yorkshire site with links to the local Register Offices is http://www.yorkshirebmd.org.uk/ - and there's an umbrella site linking to other counties at http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/ . However, not all counties have an equivalent BMD certificate service, and for those that do (including Yorkshire), coverage is not complete. If you order from a local Register Office, they will search up to 5 years, and there's no charge if the search is unsuccessful.

Arthur

[Julia Ball]

Hi, as people have already said, I use Lancashire and they are superb and you can order by phone, when I use Staffordshire, whilst they are good, you can only order by post so it takes time, usually though, only a few days, but it seems an eternity when you are waiting for a much looked for cert :-)

[Ken Boyce]

I have some questions

Can one in fact order online or by phone from UK local offices or the GRO from abroad

Which is the best and most up to date online site for locating where old registers are presently held particularly for defunct districts.
(I tend to use FreeBDM but it is hard for those of us who live offshore to keep up with the changes in jurisdiction post 1964)

Have the past changes in distict boundaries had any affect on which local office now carries the old registers or is the present location based on the last boundary change (1974+?) ie Have any of the old registers been split parts of which are now in different locations

I recall having seen locations such as the Herts Archives quoted as being a respository - would this be for the duplicate Marriage Registers which were not required to be returned to the local District Registra on completion and was obtained as part of the Church Records.

Is there a listing anywhere of old marriage registers that are still active (say over 50 yrs) or does anyone have knowledge of such (suggest new thread say "Active Old Marriage Registers")

Presumably one may be able to obtain actual uncertified photocopies or inspect orphaned and/or active marriage registers depending on the policies of the holder (Guy noted).

Regards

[arthurk]

I think most of your questions will be answered by the very comprehensive section on Civil Registration at GENUKI:
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/CivilRegistration.html for the main page, and http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/ to find information on individual districts, how and when they have changed, and where the registers are now kept.

You can certainly order certificates online from the GRO - see http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates - you used to be able to do it by phone, but as I now use the online service, I don't know if you still can.

I don't think many (if any) local offices have an online ordering service; some will take orders by phone, but not all. (Some take weeks to deal with FH queries, and some are reputed to throw them away - to save frustration it can be a good idea to ask before placing an order, as in some cases the GRO will be quicker.)

I haven't answered all your questions, but I hope it's enough to be going on with.

Arthur

[Ken Boyce]

Thanks Arthur
Trolling through the GRO link you posted I managed to find a ref to offshore applications buried in the section on delivery times and they now do offer international ordering by implication (nowhere have I located a difinitive statement to this fact)

I'm having a problem coming to grips with the style used in the GENUKI pages as I believe by lumping the data in the form that they have used (and which is copied by many other sites) that they are very confusing to a beginner at least for the areas of interest to me namely London, Midx and Herts I'm sure many beginners have been searching online Census or in CDs for relatives living in East Barnet 1851 thro 1901 under Herts whereas they should have been searching under the Middx census - if searching by census name index with or withou district one may never realize the error as the return is "not found" not "wrong county"

In my case I need to get info from original birth entries for Northampton c1870 and for Edmonton c1890 as I believe in at least 2 instances either the Quarterly Return transcripts were wrongly transcribed or the Central Office wrongly transcribed one of the processes in producing the Index or wrongly copied the original index when they set up the typeset (many beginners do not realise how many processes the data went through before arriving as the (in)famous GRO BMD Index or the fact that GRO issued certs are transcripts of transcripts not direct transcripts of the originals)

In my case it is almost certain that at least one of the Northampton BRAWN's appears in the index as a BROWN My Edmonton problem is vastly more complex as I previously posted under Mysterious May

Regards

[arthurk]

A few points in reply...

From reading other posts here and elsewhere, I'm pretty sure the GRO post overseas, at the same price as UK, but as I'm in England I've never needed to ask about it. Local register offices sometimes add a bit for postage - they'll tell you if you ask.

I'm not familiar with any of the areas you mention, and don't know how efficient the local offices are. (I also haven't read about Mysterious May.) However, what you pay to a local office includes a search of up to a 5 year period, and if nothing is found, the fee is refunded in full. With the GRO you only get part of it back. Bear in mind, though, that a lot of local offices don't have a consolidated marriage index, so can only provide a marriage certificate if you can tell them where it happened, or at least make a good guess. Since the GRO has a single index, you don't need to know the church before you apply.

Another advantage with local offices is that you often get to speak with the person doing the actual search, or at least someone in the next room, who is familiar with the particular locality and its records, and I always find this a lot more reassuring. The ones I have used are always happy to take down details to check against (age, address, occupation, husband's name etc), and some will even ring you back to make sure they have the right entry before issuing the certificate. They're quite canny though - they won't actually give you any information over the phone in case you decide not to buy the certificate.

Anyway, the bottom line is that if there are doubts and questions about getting the right certificate, I would always recommend going through the local office if this is possible. Good luck!

Arthur