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Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

Genealogy, Local, General
Clariman
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Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76675

Postby Clariman » August 24th, 2017, 8:20 am

I am using the Scotlands People website to search for some children of an ancestor that died young. Because they never appeared on census records, I don't know their names. It would seem that searching for births by listing parents names would be a perfectly obvious search to be able to do, but I cannot find a way of doing it on Scotlands People. DAK know how to do it?

Do Ancestry and Findmypast have Scottish early 20th century birth records? I suspect they don't because I cannot find a birth where I know the child's name.

johnhemming
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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76683

Postby johnhemming » August 24th, 2017, 8:44 am

The Mormans might be able to help with this. They have been doing this sort of thing for a long time. I found quite a chunk of my father's family where they had created records in the 1800s. Which are now on the web.

https://www.familysearch.org/

jackdaww
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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76694

Postby jackdaww » August 24th, 2017, 9:25 am

i think you can do this easily on the FREEBMD website.

staffordian
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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76715

Postby staffordian » August 24th, 2017, 10:39 am

jackdaww wrote:i think you can do this easily on the FREEBMD website.

Unfortunately, FreeBMD doesn't cover Scotland.

However, their sister site...

https://www.freereg.org.uk

does, but it is very incomplete.
Last edited by staffordian on August 24th, 2017, 10:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

staffordian
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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76717

Postby staffordian » August 24th, 2017, 10:42 am

johnhemming wrote:The Mormans might be able to help with this. They have been doing this sort of thing for a long time. I found quite a chunk of my father's family where they had created records in the 1800s. Which are now on the web.

https://www.familysearch.org/

Familysearch can be good, but it pays to be a little sceptical of some records because they may have been uploaded by users with little or no sourcing qulted.

Having said that, where they list parish registers etc, then the site can be very useful.

genou
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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76839

Postby genou » August 24th, 2017, 5:29 pm

Clariman wrote:I am using the Scotlands People website to search for some children of an ancestor that died young. Because they never appeared on census records, I don't know their names. It would seem that searching for births by listing parents names would be a perfectly obvious search to be able to do, but I cannot find a way of doing it on Scotlands People. DAK know how to do it?

Do Ancestry and Findmypast have Scottish early 20th century birth records? I suspect they don't because I cannot find a birth where I know the child's name.


But if the ancestor was born / died in Scotland, either the birth or death certificate will give you the names of the parents. And a birth cert will very likely tell you where and when they were married.

Clariman
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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76843

Postby Clariman » August 24th, 2017, 5:49 pm

genou wrote:
Clariman wrote:I am using the Scotlands People website to search for some children of an ancestor that died young. Because they never appeared on census records, I don't know their names. It would seem that searching for births by listing parents names would be a perfectly obvious search to be able to do, but I cannot find a way of doing it on Scotlands People. DAK know how to do it?

Do Ancestry and Findmypast have Scottish early 20th century birth records? I suspect they don't because I cannot find a birth where I know the child's name.


But if the ancestor was born / died in Scotland, either the birth or death certificate will give you the names of the parents. And a birth cert will very likely tell you where and when they were married.

Thanks. Just tried looking at death certificates too but have the same problem. The search for the Birth or Death does NOT allow you to use the parents' names as part of the search. Either I am being thick and not seeing it, or it is very poor design.

genou
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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76854

Postby genou » August 24th, 2017, 6:47 pm

Clariman wrote:
genou wrote:
Clariman wrote:I am using the Scotlands People website to search for some children of an ancestor that died young. Because they never appeared on census records, I don't know their names. It would seem that searching for births by listing parents names would be a perfectly obvious search to be able to do, but I cannot find a way of doing it on Scotlands People. DAK know how to do it?

Do Ancestry and Findmypast have Scottish early 20th century birth records? I suspect they don't because I cannot find a birth where I know the child's name.


But if the ancestor was born / died in Scotland, either the birth or death certificate will give you the names of the parents. And a birth cert will very likely tell you where and when they were married.


Thanks. Just tried looking at death certificates too but have the same problem. The search for the Birth or Death does NOT allow you to use the parents' names as part of the search. Either I am being thick and not seeing it, or it is very poor design.


There is an index on Mother's maiden name on death certs. Do you have a decently short time window for birth/death ? If you have census records for the ancestor, that should give you the parish of birth. Unless you are looking for a very common surname, that combination can give you a manageable data set . AFAIK the indexing on GROS was done manually, so that's why the dataset doesn't have what you are looking for, since each additional index is incrementally expensive.

Still, a damn sight better than English records.

Clariman
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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76881

Postby Clariman » August 24th, 2017, 8:36 pm

Thanks genou. I had a go with mothers maiden name but then nothing comes up at all - including for children which I do know about and who are there.

The surname is common so expensive to look at all of them. They were very poor and moved around a bit, during the period I am looking at. It is a period of 12 years and births were in different districts.

I'll try to be a bit more methodical about it.

genou
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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76889

Postby genou » August 24th, 2017, 8:48 pm

Clariman wrote:Thanks genou. I had a go with mothers maiden name but then nothing comes up at all - including for children which I do know about and who are there.

The surname is common so expensive to look at all of them. They were very poor and moved around a bit, during the period I am looking at. It is a period of 12 years and births were in different districts.

I'll try to be a bit more methodical about it.


That suggests the maiden name isn't indexed - there is an option "maiden name blank" ( or some such ), but that takes you back where you started. My only other idea would be whether the family followed the normal naming conventions, which might narrow things a little. If you aren't aware of them - https://blog.findmypast.co.uk/tradition ... 46700.html . But you need to have information about order of birth, and ascendant relatives' names.

Clariman
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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#76997

Postby Clariman » August 25th, 2017, 11:38 am

genou wrote:That suggests the maiden name isn't indexed - there is an option "maiden name blank" ( or some such ), but that takes you back where you started. My only other idea would be whether the family followed the normal naming conventions, which might narrow things a little. If you aren't aware of them - https://blog.findmypast.co.uk/tradition ... 46700.html . But you need to have information about order of birth, and ascendant relatives' names.

Excellent thanks! I'll do some analysis of other generations to see if this was adopted. However, the matriarch (grandmother of those I am looking for) of the family was from England so who knows what customs they would have followed.

There is also a Scottish tradition of the middle-name of first child or first son being the maiden-name of the mother. That can be very handy.

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Re: Searching for births where parents are known (genealogy)

#79513

Postby pancake101 » September 6th, 2017, 2:34 pm

Clariman wrote:I am using the Scotlands People website to search for some children of an ancestor that died young. Because they never appeared on census records, I don't know their names. It would seem that searching for births by listing parents names would be a perfectly obvious search to be able to do, but I cannot find a way of doing it on Scotlands People. DAK know how to do it?

Do Ancestry and Findmypast have Scottish early 20th century birth records? I suspect they don't because I cannot find a birth where I know the child's name.


Hi Clariman
How are you getting on with your searching. I have done many searches for children that were born and died between censuses in Scotland. I have the added difficulty of three spellings of the surname - however the area of registration is usually confined to a county - then a district or two within this.

What I do is, if I know from the 1911 census that there are three children unaccounted for, I look at the list of children I know of and then see when a child could have been born and how old they would have been at the next census.

I enter the surname in Scotlands People , no need to tick female or make, - I look up the county that the family stayed in hopefully down to the district - I look each year in turn if more than a one year space, noting any possible names. Sometimes, if the family moved I have the county but have to enter two or three different districts - trial and error- but births and deaths of others along with census entries usually narrows the field. Then I have a list of' 'possibles'.

I then go to deaths and try out one by one the names of the listed children within the time frame - so Ann Smith between 1905 and 1911 with the registration districts as above - then a list follows and I can work out from the ages of those who died- if they fit. So an Ann Smith born in 1907 and and Ann Smith who died aged 3 in 1910 both entries of the same district is likely to be the same child. Strangely if I put too much info I can up end up with less.

Some names are obviously not family whilst others just as obviously are- you know when you see them but if 3 Ann Smiths fit the bill - I put it down into my book for my next visit to the archives to confirm. I have kept ScotlandsPeople afloat over the years before I got this down to a fine art that works for me.


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