Do You Need To Buy Certificates?

It's often recommended that you buy birth, marriage and death certificates to validate your genealogy research whenever possible, and ensure that you're not barking up the wrong tree with dates or even names. This is all very well, but at £7-10 per certificate (depending on your requirements, and a whopping £23 for priority service), it can quickly become an expensive business.

As a means of verifying names, places and dates, there are alternatives to certificates. For example, if you want to confirm a marriage or death, you can look at parish records for marriages and burials. These are often microfiched by family history centres and record offices, and most will let you obtain photocopies of relevant entries. This isn't all that different to requesting certificates, as they are also copies. The cost varies according to the place in question, but you can expect to pay around 50p per photocopy. It might sound pricey, but it's a fraction of the price of a GRO certificate and will often give much the same information.

Using parish records. The big downside of this is that you need to know the parish in which the event took place. People moved around a fair bit and will not necessarily have stayed in one specific village (or even one particular county) for long. If you're not sure of the rough parish or date(s), it doesn't mean that you can't find the event in parish records. However, be prepared for a long and drawn-out search process!

Using parish records to find birth records can be more problematic as it was baptisms that were recorded. In some cases though, the birth date would be included in the margin or in a separate column - especially if the baptism happened some time after the birth. It wasn't that uncommon to have baptisms conducted one to two years after the birth, and this may have been reflected in the baptism entry. This won't always have been the case though, but it's worth having a look if you don't want to shell out for a birth certificate. Often, there will be much the same information included in the parish records, such as the name(s) of the child, the names of the parents (if both were given), the occupation(s) of the parents, and sometimes the address at which the child was born.

Related posts:

Finding Out Where Your Ancestors Are Buried

What To Expect From Marriage Records

What To Expect From Baptism Records

What To Expect From Marriage Records

Early marriage records can be a great source of family information if the father of the bride and/or groom was present at the ceremony. This will not always be the case though, especially if the marriage took place in a different county to the one in which one of the parties was born. Just to clarify, this post is referring to the marriage records in the parish records, rather than marriage certificates (there will be a separate post on this at a later date). Generally speaking, marriage records tend to contain the following information:

Names. The names of both the bride and groom will feature on the marriage record. This may not include middle names.

Ages. The age of both the bride and groom tends to have been included on the marriage record. In some cases, this may simply say 'Of full age' to say that the bride in particular was of legal age to marry without the consent of her parents. Most of the time though, it gave the actual age at the time of the marriage.

Occupation. The occupation of both the bride and groom should be included, although this will not always be particularly enlightening. It is common for this box to simply say 'Spinster' for the bride.

Fathers' names. If one or both of the fathers' attended the marriage ceremony, this will often be stated on the record. If they did not attend, the marriage record will usually list other people as witnesses. Usually, this will be family members of some description (perhaps a sibling, aunt or uncle) but the witnesses may be unrelated to both the bride and groom.

Marriage records tended not to differ much from marriage certificates in terms of the information that is included. To access marriage records, you need to know the parish in which the marriage took place to look through the parish record in question. A good idea of the year also helps to narrow down the search a lot. To find marriage certificates, you need to know the district in which the marriage took place but not the parish itself. The General Register Office (GRO) will conduct a search one year either way of a specified year if you request this (for a fee naturally), so marriage certificates can be easier to find.