Searching for a Birth Record

[happypinecone]

Hello

I am searching for a birth certificate of Mary Ann Wrathall Nee: Walker. I saw a hint for Stepney St Dunstan, Middlesex as a possibility in 1791 - 1792. I do have a month of August. I checked the Parish website and they gave a link to another website. That website has no information at all.

I gather in 1791 children were not given a birth certificate like today. The churches hold a record of the birth and baptism. Is there a website best for this information in the United Kingdom? I am originally from NZ and now reside in America. I don't know where to look. I was wondering if someone could please point me in the right direction

[Lesley Robertson]

Bear in mind that I have escaped from the Scottish sector, but as far as I know, English baptismal records are on the commercial sites such as Ancestry and Find my Past. If the names are fairly common, I usually do a preliminary search of the LDS site, FamilySearch, but bear in mind that it's an index.
Also, many church records have not survived - you may find info about that on the GENUKI page for the area you are interested in.

Hopefully, an English expert will be along to correct me!

[arthurk]

Hi, and welcome.

Lesley's answer is a good one, and here's an expanded version (mostly written before I read hers).

You're right that there were no civil birth registrations in the 1790s - in England and Wales these began in 1837. Anyway, you can start your search for free using the FamilySearch website, though you do need to register - go to https://www.familysearch.org/en/

I tried searching in the Records section for a Mary Ann Walker born between 1788 and 1795, restricting records to England - London, and the type to Birth, Baptism and Christening. This brought up quite a few possibilities, though the birthdate you have may help to narrow these down (assuming it's correct).

The first, and possibly most likely, entry was in Stepney, though at St George's in the East. (I'm not sure this is technically Stepney, though the parish was created out of St Dunstan's.) Next you can look in the FamilySearch wiki to find out more about the church registers and where you can see images - these are the relevant pages:

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en...esex_Genealogy

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en...esex_Genealogy

You'll see that for both of these the images are at Ancestry. You need to pay to use this site, either short-term credits or a longer-term subscription, though you can often get free access through a public library, and occasionally there are free trials - but keep an eye on whether they might take money at the end of one if you don't explicitly cancel. Ancestry also has a lot of other London/Middlesex material.

The other main site for English research and register images is FindMyPast. This has some of the same things as Ancestry, but quite a lot of different ones too; register images (if available at all) are generally on one or the other, but not both. Many of us find that we need to use both, especially if our interests span multiple locations.

(Genuki is always worth a look, but in this case I found the info about registers etc more easily at FamilySearch.)

[Lesley Robertson]

Thanks, Arthur. I should save that for next time!
I'll add one point - some registers only record the baptism date, some include the birthdate. It's always worth checking a month or two either side of a date that you have in case you have one and the register has the other.

[happypinecone]

Bear in mind that I have escaped from the Scottish sector, but as far as I know, English baptismal records are on the commercial sites such as Ancestry and Find my Past. If the names are fairly common, I usually do a preliminary search of the LDS site, FamilySearch, but bear in mind that it's an index.
Also, many church records have not survived - you may find info about that on the GENUKI page for the area you are interested in.

Hopefully, an English expert will be along to correct me!

Thank you for getting back to me. Scotland is another one I will be digging into. Both of my grandmothers have Scottish ancestry. I do have Ancestry and was having a hard time finding the records through there.

[helachau]

I had had a peep at FindMyPast and, as advised above, there are a number of Mary Ann Walkers in the frame using London as the likely birthplace. That they left for Oz in 1831 rules out establishing PoB via the Census.
Confirmed year of birth from Mary Ann's death record in Tasmania 26 July 1852, age 60.
Checked the 1810 marriage for witnesses - no Walker witnesses (2 x Wrathall, 1 x Sibley and 1 x Simpson?)

[happypinecone]

Hi, and welcome.

Lesley's answer is a good one, and here's an expanded version (mostly written before I read hers).

You're right that there were no civil birth registrations in the 1790s - in England and Wales these began in 1837. Anyway, you can start your search for free using the FamilySearch website, though you do need to register - go to https://www.familysearch.org/en/

I tried searching in the Records section for a Mary Ann Walker born between 1788 and 1795, restricting records to England - London, and the type to Birth, Baptism and Christening. This brought up quite a few possibilities, though the birthdate you have may help to narrow these down (assuming it's correct).

The first, and possibly most likely, entry was in Stepney, though at St George's in the East. (I'm not sure this is technically Stepney, though the parish was created out of St Dunstan's.) Next you can look in the FamilySearch wiki to find out more about the church registers and where you can see images - these are the relevant pages:

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en...esex_Genealogy

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en...esex_Genealogy

You'll see that for both of these the images are at Ancestry. You need to pay to use this site, either short-term credits or a longer-term subscription, though you can often get free access through a public library, and occasionally there are free trials - but keep an eye on whether they might take money at the end of one if you don't explicitly cancel. Ancestry also has a lot of other London/Middlesex material.

The other main site for English research and register images is FindMyPast. This has some of the same things as Ancestry, but quite a lot of different ones too; register images (if available at all) are generally on one or the other, but not both. Many of us find that we need to use both, especially if our interests span multiple locations.

(Genuki is always worth a look, but in this case I found the info about registers etc more easily at FamilySearch.)

Thank you This has some great websites I will check out. I do have Ancestry and my sister shares another ancestry website with me. I haven't checked the ones you have listed though. I will try them and hopefully can come up with something. I am not 100% sure she was born in the UK. Supposedly her father was a wealthy man who owned hotels there. He also started out selling alcohol in some manner. I thought maybe he owned Taverns.

If I can find her birth, then I can find the names of her parents hopefully. This website is wonderful and the people are so helpful. Hopefully one day I can return the favor to someone on here.