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Statutory Records Research Hints

Example of an 1894 death entry from the Registers

Example of 1894 death entry from Registers

Each certificate gives a wealth of information to the family historian and provides information to further your research.

— Birth records of an ancestor give the names of both their parents and their date and place of marriage. From this you can trace that marriage record.

— Once you have that marriage record you will know where they lived, how old they were when they married and who their parents were.

— This in turn can lead you to another birth certificate and so on.

— Marriage records give addresses so this is a good way to find the census records for the person you are looking for.

— Death records also give parental details and whether the parents are still alive as well as giving maiden names of the mother. This can help to narrow down the parent's date of death.

— They also mention any spouse the deceased may have which is useful as a way of confirming you have the right person.

— It's also worth noting the name of the informant on the death certificate as this is usually a family member.

One caveat with the information contained on the post 1855 certificates is that for the earlier years, the information contained on the certificates was not always accurate because the registrars did not always have Old Parish Registers to hand to check the accuracy of the information provided by the informants.

For instance, men registering the birth of their offspring sometimes give the wrong date for their marriage (men can never remember when they were married!).

If there is a big age gap between bride and groom on a marriage certificate you can sometimes find that one of them has knocked a few years off their real age! This of course causes problems in trying to trace a birth certificate for that person.

Death records can be registered by a grandchild or a neighbour and they can innocently give wrong information.

People believe that because details are on an official certificate then they must be correct but this is not always true.