Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 76

First calculate your ancestor’s birth date:

EXAMPLE: MY ANCESTOR’S AGE WAS GIVEN AS 23 ON 2 MAY 1923. DEDUCT AGE FROM YEAR: 1923 – 23 = 1900 THEREFORE, THAT ANCESTOR WAS BORN BETWEEN 2 MAY 1900 AND 3 MAY 1899

This means that his birth should appear in the indexes covering the June, September and December quarters of 1899, or the March, June and (remembering that births could be registered up to six weeks after the event, taking us into the month of July) September quarters of 1900.

Write down the period you have searched and the possibilities encountered. If you are searching for a very popular combination of names, like Mary Smith, it is sensible to limit yourself at first to entries in the registration districts surrounding the area where the birth might have taken place.

If your search fails, widen the geographical area. Do not under any circumstances stop at the first possibility you find, but cover the period fully. There are plenty of instances of two children being born into the same family with the same forenames. For example, a child might die very young and its name be given to the next child born into the family. Alternatively, two children might be born to very close relations and each given the same ‘family’ names. You can work out the most likely entries from the geographical locations of the registration districts: ask for a check to be made for the right father’s name.

If the birth certificate does not appear in the period, assume that the age at marriage was slightly inaccurate and widen the search to cover a year or two either side.

The birth certificate will provide you with the full names of your great-grandparents, enabling you to search back for their marriage – and an earlier generation of your family tree.

It is often useful to know the registration district in which your ancestors lived. These originally corresponded to the old Poor Law Unions. a trade directory (see Chapter Eight) provides this date for each parish. The IHGS publishes two maps showing the location of the registration districts for 1837–51 and 1852–1946. For details after 1946 you can consult J. A. Newport’s An Index to the Civil Registration Districts of England&Wales, 1837 to date (Pledger, 1989).

A page from a General Registration index.