Death Certificate

[History_Hunter]

The reference to great-grandfather should be "my great-grandfather". Is that what you meant? Can I come out of the corner, now?

Thomas is supposed to be Fredrick William's father.

[History_Hunter]

Hi Pam;

Thank you.

I've used the GRO Search to verify that "Martin" was the maiden surname for the mother of Frederick's siblings. I guess that I've got the correct Thomas Wells and Hannah Martin marriage, so the next step back involves verifying what I have on the families of James Wells and James Martin.

By the way, the GRO site seems to only have searching for births and deaths. Am I missing something for marriages?

I have always used FreeBMD and copied the Index Images for reference. They also show the mothers maiden name and in later years the persons birthdate (for certain record types) as well. I get the impression that you might prefer the GRO site. Any particular reason?

By the way; this exercise of verifying the entries has caused me to stumble upon some missing info that I am logging as part of my records checklist that we talked about. This is really a good thing!

[Pam Downes]

The reference to great-grandfather should be "my great-grandfather". Is that what you meant? Can I come out of the corner, now?

Thomas is supposed to be Fredrick William's father.

No.
And no.
Try again.

Pam

[History_Hunter]

Go stand in the corner immediately and don't come out until you can tell me what is wrong.

Pam

It should have been "Ethleen Alice Colborne" not "Ethleen Alice Wells". I HATE transcribing from records into postings. Try as I might errors sneak in. These laptop keypads are so finicky at best...not very good when tying to type at any speed.

[History_Hunter]

I did a check of births against the GRO Index via their site. I found a 3-4 transcription errors in the FreeBMD data and corrected them to reflect the GRO data. I presume the GRO Index data is almost always correct for the data that would come off the printed indices or there would be some very loud complaints from patrons who ordered certificates.

I did notice 1 (and only one) issue in the GRO data. Frederick Arthur Wells, 1905 DEC qtr., comes up with a mothers maiden name of COLMAN. Now I know that the Birth Index does not actually contain the mothers maiden name, so I'm assuming the GRO has transcribed this incorrectly or that the handwriting on the paper copy from which it was taken was not clear. I'd hate to have to order a certificate to find out how/if they made an error, though. I wonder if writing to them to request they verify their data for the record would be received well.

If one uses the GRO Index to establish the year, quarter, district, maiden name, Vol. and Pg., I presume that having an image of the index page from FreeBMD is likely overkill. I would still go there to check the image out if the GRO data didn't make any sense or was apparently missing. Dropping images of the Birth and Death Index pages, in favour of the GRO data, cut filing for Birth and Death Index data. That leaves only the Marriage data dependent on FreeBMD. In that case, I'll definitely download the image and not just rely on the database index.

Make any sense?

[Pam Downes]

It should have been "Ethleen Alice Colborne" not "Ethleen Alice Wells". I HATE transcribing from records into postings. Try as I might errors sneak in. These laptop keypads are so finicky at best...not very good when tying to type at any speed.

You may now remove yourself from the corner.
And stop blaming your keyboard. It types what you tell it.

Pam

[Pam Downes]

I did a check of births against the GRO Index via their site. I found a 3-4 transcription errors in the FreeBMD data and corrected them to reflect the GRO data.

Need to make sure I understand you correctly.
Previously in your database you had an entry for Fred Bloggs, birth registration June quarter 1900, Oxford registration district volume number 27 page 1234, and that information was taken from the FreeBMD site.
You have now checked those details against the GRO Historical births index which says the page number is 1235 and you have corrected the page number in your database.
Is that (theory) correct?

I presume the GRO Index data is almost always correct for the data that would come off the printed indices or there would be some very loud complaints from patrons who ordered certificates.

You would be surprised just how many errors there are in the 'original' GRO Index which is the one transcribed onto FreeBMD.
I don't have anything to compare for births and deaths but some years ago I transcribed twenty years of parish marriage registers for a particular project. I then checked my transcriptions to FreeBMD and the GRO Index images.
For two errors search:
marriage, John Leng, June quarter 1853, Boston registration district.
marriage, Henry Taylor, September quarter 1857, Boston registration district.
Click on the envelope to the right of the entry.

One of the many excellent advantages of using FreeBMD is if the volume or page numbers don't match the district name, then the district name appears in italics. Check the page image to see if it's transcriber error or one made by the GRO. (They famously have my aunt and uncle who married in the 1950s marrying in different registration districts.)

I did notice 1 (and only one) issue in the GRO data. Frederick Arthur Wells, 1905 DEC qtr., comes up with a mothers maiden name of COLMAN. Now I know that the Birth Index does not actually contain the mothers maiden name, so I'm assuming the GRO has transcribed this incorrectly or that the handwriting on the paper copy from which it was taken was not clear. I'd hate to have to order a certificate to find out how/if they made an error, though. I wonder if writing to them to request they verify their data for the record would be received well.

You've nothing to lose by asking them to confirm their information. It's in their interest that their index is as accurare as possible.

If one uses the GRO Index to establish the year, quarter, district, maiden name, Vol. and Pg., I presume that having an image of the index page from FreeBMD is likely overkill. I would still go there to check the image out if the GRO data didn't make any sense or was apparently missing. Dropping images of the Birth and Death Index pages, in favour of the GRO data, cut filing for Birth and Death Index data. That leaves only the Marriage data dependent on FreeBMD. In that case, I'll definitely download the image and not just rely on the database index.

Make any sense?

Have you noticed the 'specs' on the right of an entry on FreeBMD? That takes you to a link to the GRO Index page from which FreeBMD was transcribed. If you check that the transcription is correct, and record that the info is from FreeBMD, why do you need an image of the page? That's definitely overkill, IMO, and a waste of data space.

By the way, I prepared a copy of my database but it won't load to imgur. Will have to consider plan B.

Pam

[History_Hunter]

Need to make sure I understand you correctly.
Previously in your database you had an entry for Fred Bloggs, birth registration June quarter 1900, Oxford registration district volume number 27 page 1234, and that information was taken from the FreeBMD site.
You have now checked those details against the GRO Historical births index which says the page number is 1235 and you have corrected the page number in your database.
Is that (theory) correct?

Essentially, yes. I found the stated quarter in FreeBMD differed from that of the GRO.

You've nothing to lose by asking them to confirm their information. It's in their interest that their index is as accurare as possible.

I'll see about dropping them a line.

Have you noticed the 'specs' on the right of an entry on FreeBMD? That takes you to a link to the GRO Index page from which FreeBMD was transcribed. If you check that the transcription is correct, and record that the info is from FreeBMD, why do you need an image of the page? That's definitely overkill, IMO, and a waste of data space.

I thought that might be the case. I will, however, use the volume and page to double-check on FreeBMD. Once one is reasonably sure that the transcription was correct and could order a certificate (if needed), extra images are exactly that... extra.

[History_Hunter]

By the way, I prepared a copy of my database but it won't load to imgur. Will have to consider plan B

Looking forward to seeing what you've done. GoogleDrive also works well and they have an app which makes GoogleDrive look like you have another drive to which you can read and write.

[AntonyMMM]

I did a check of births against the GRO Index via their site. I found a 3-4 transcription errors in the FreeBMD data and corrected them to reflect the GRO data. I presume the GRO Index data is almost always correct for the data that would come off the printed indices or there would be some very loud complaints from patrons who ordered certificates.

All indexes contain errors - the old printed indexes (as used on FreeBMD) certainly do. The "new" GRO index has been taken from their copies of the register entries, not from the existing printed indexes, so should be more accurate, but it also has issues.

The most important thing to understand is the old and new indexes have been created using different indexing rules, so the two will not match in some cases, and this is not necessarily an indication of an error.