Ancestry.co.uk - Who do you think you are?

justevi

My tip would be NOT to order from GRO unless you are positive you have the correct BM or D, especially if you have a common surname. If everything doesnt match they keep half your money and dont send the cert. My advice is to order from the relevant register office as usually they will not only return your cheque if no match but will often search a few years either way for a match for you. eg If you know a person was born or married in a certain place but dont know exact year and cant find a match on the indexes it may be worth contacting reg office and asking, most are very helpful and I have known them to confirm details for me over the phone tho they wont actually give you details from certificates.

hethmar

Sadly though a lot of the London offices will just tell you to go to the GRO for the certs, Tower Hamlets is one who actually has their own bmd index now and will send you certs BUT when Ive had them from them they are copied in modern handwriting, which probably doesnt matter but it does add the possibility of mistakes and well, they dont look so good in your bmd cert albums

~Chameleon~

justevi wrote: »

My tip would be NOT to order from GRO unless you are positive you have the correct BM or D, especially if you have a common surname. If everything doesnt match they keep half your money and dont send the cert. My advice is to order from the relevant register office as usually they will not only return your cheque if no match but will often search a few years either way for a match for you. eg If you know a person was born or married in a certain place but dont know exact year and cant find a match on the indexes it may be worth contacting reg office and asking, most are very helpful and I have known them to confirm details for me over the phone tho they wont actually give you details from certificates.

But the idea is to do your own research then order the relevant certs based on the names/dates you uncover. It's inevitable you will end up with a pile of certs that don't belong to your family as a result of your research, but that's in no way any fault of the GRO. They provide an excellent service, especially for those that have family BMD outside of local area.

justevi

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

But the idea is to do your own research then order the relevant certs based on the names/dates you uncover. It's inevitable you will end up with a pile of certs that don't belong to your family as a result of your research, but that's in no way any fault of the GRO. They provide an excellent service, especially for those that have family BMD outside of local area.

Maybe I didnt explain very well. I wasn't suggesting that you let the records office do your research for you but that if you have a very common name it may be difficult to pinpoint yours. You may need a birth certificate for example a John Smith b circa 1875 and find there are a few in same time period. Although you may even know parent/s names, If you order from GRO you will still have to go thro each possible match seperately and possible get a few wrong certs or if you specify parent/s names will lose half your money for each no match one. If you go to actual reg office and give them the matches you need and rough year they will usually look at all possible matches within a few years and send you the correct one. I had ordered a few wrong certificates myself until someone put me wise to this and having surnames like Taylor and Thompson along with the James, Henrys and Williams to go with them it has saved me quite a bit of money!.

~Chameleon~

Ok, I see what you mean now, thanks for explaining. I guess I've just been incredibly lucky in my research so far to be able to narrow down the majority of my searches to a specific person. I only have a very small number of unwanted certs. I wonder if there might be a market on ebay for them!

Grumpelstiltskin

Chameleon Do you belong to RootsChat?

http://www.rootschat.com/

There is a board on there where you can advertise your unwanted certificates.

~Chameleon~

Grumpelstiltskin wrote: »

Chameleon Do you belong to RootsChat?

http://www.rootschat.com/

There is a board on there where you can advertise your unwanted certificates.

Yes, I am although it's been quite a while since I looked in there as my research has pretty much taken a back seat over the last year or two when I hit brick walls on most lines. The 1911 census gave me a couple of new leads but to be honest i've just not had time to delve any deeper yet.

I'll certainly have a look at the unwanted certificates board though, thanks!

hethmar

Theres also a website - cant remember the name now, have a google - where you can enter all the details of all your certs in case they match someone else research (cant say Ive bothered!) and another where you can offer your useless certs to anyone who needs them.

LesD

LesD wrote: »

One trick I've seen somewhere (may even have been on here!) is to use the AncestryLibrary access and then 'Share' the document with yourself (by email)! You can then print it at home.

I mentioned this earlier, but have had a problem in the last couple of days by not being able to retrieve all the documents from the emails.

Anyone else suffered this?

hethmar

In the past I have found that after a certain number of "shared" docs Ancestry stop them.