Hard copy birth certificates will help you use the online census records as they provide important parental details. I hope I can give you some practical family tree help in this article. I have been met with many a brick wall that should have stopped me in my tracks. Yet with a little lateral thinking and lot of patience you can overcome many family tree problems and continue your research.
UK Birth Certificates contain following information:
Registration and General Register Office (GRO) Reference:
The GRO was set up in 1836 by an Act of Parliament. All births, marriages and deaths were recorded from 1st July 1837. Every event was allocated a unique reference by the GRO. Before 1837 there was no requirement to notify anyone but people did get their children baptised. If you can't find a birth certificate you may find a baptismal record within parish records.
One thing to remember is that parents didn't always baptise their children straight away and often baptised several of their children at the same time. A baptism date isn't a birth date, children could be baptised years after their birth. Before 1875 there was no penalty if parents did not register their child's birth and there was also confusion as to whether you had to register your child if he had already been baptised, hence there are gaps in the birth registration for children.
The Date of Birth:
During your research you may find the recorded date of birth for a particular ancestor varies from one census to the next. Some people didn't know how old they were, or the enumerator would guess their age, whereas others didn't want their spouse to know their correct age. My own grandmother would routinely take 10 years off of her age whenever she met someone new!
District:
There are many sub districts within a district for the registration of birth / marriage / deaths. For example, if a person was born in Southwark the birth would have been recorded in one of the 5 sub districts depending on proximity to where the person lived.
Full Name:
When is a name not a name? I could not find the genealogical link to my paternal grandfather and without him I couldn't progress any further back. My parents told me his name was William, but he made things difficult by not being consistent and recorded his name as William or Christopher on different census records.
Your grandmother may have liked to be called Annie, but she may have been christened Ann, Annabel or Anastasia. Annie could have been her middle name or her birth certificate may record her as Doris Ann. Where do you start? When you locate the census record containing her correct birth name, there is a danger that you may discard it in error. I learnt an important lesson from this which was to subsequently save me a lot time and frustration.
When you ask family members about grandparents, aunts, uncles, great grandparents etc. remember that the names they give you may not tally with the official birth name.
Father's Name:
This is the jewel that will unlock the next paternal generation.
Mother's Maiden Name:
Another jewel, as you will now have access to the maternal side of the family. The surname against the mother is very informative on a UK birth certificate. If she has not been married before, then she will be shown for example, as Jane Smith formerly Jones, meaning that she is married and her maiden name was Jones. If she has been married before she will be shown for example as Jane Brown, late Jones (maiden name), formerly Smith (her previous married name). Before 1969 all previous names had to be recorded.
Occupation of Father:
This piece of family history will help you on the census records. You may come across people with the same name, date and place of birth. I have found exactly that in my own research. Using all the pieces of verified information that you have, you will be able to pick out the right ancestor. Looking at the two entries, if one is a solicitor and one is a bricklayer and the birth certificate you are holding says the father is a bricklayer you have your answer.
Pick out the nearest census to the age of the child's birth certificate and locate the matching name with the occupation of bricklayer. I know this isn't failsafe but you will be using other verified information to tie the ancestor into your UK family tree.
The online census is a fascinating set of records, documenting people, their lives, family, occupations and also the migration of people at different times, but they cannot be assumed to be correct. You will find many omissions, transcript errors, missing records, illegible names. For example daughters recorded as sons, spouses not recorded and the odd child who appears to be living on their own in a household.
I am afraid this is all true of online census records, but you forgive all of this just to be able to move forward with your UK family tree.
