How Much Information Can You Get From Certificates?
August 2010
I can speak for British certificates, i.e. birth, marriage and death, although I am sure that the US and other countries will include the same details.
On a Birth certificate for instance you are going to see the name of the child, the birth date, the names of the parents and their address at the time of the birth and the occupations of Father and/or Mother. Also you will see the registration district where the birth occurred and was registered.
If you know that this child was the first in the family, you could generally look for the marriage somewhere around 1 year previous. I say somewhere around because it could be that the birth occurred quite soon after the marriage or even longer than a year.
If the child was not the eldest then you can’t get that sort of help unfortunately.
If you can determine the ages of the parents this can sometimes help you guess when they were married. The woman could have been married from age 17 onwards [although further back in time they could have been married at a very early age. The aristocrats sometimes married their children off when they were merely small children in order to gain the family alliance that they wanted].
If you are in the UK and are searching in the St. Catherine’s Index for the particular event, birth, marriage or death, and if you don’t find the details in the first year you look at, just search each year backwards [and forwards] from the year you first searched. You should come across the event you are looking for if it was after 1837.
If we are talking about births, marriages and deaths back to 1837 [in the UK] when registration became mandatory you will also have the benefit of census returns.
The earliest available census would have been 1841 [in the UK] and onwards every 10 years. You might be lucky enough to find an index which would help you locate the family you are searching for, if not you need some idea of where the family lived.
You will have access online to UK census records for England and Wales from 1841 to 1911.
The census return would list the Head of the Household, usually the Father, but sometimes the Mother in the case of a widow. The family were listed in order of age and their occupation shown and relationship to the head of the house.
In the earlier census returns there would also be notes on persons who were deaf, mute, or lunatics!
Sometimes you would find people at the house on census night who were not the immediate family, perhaps nieces and nephews, grandchildren, parents or in-laws.
These can also be very useful pieces of information because you would see their surnames and in the case of grandchildren you would know the name of the parent who was not of the immediate family. In-laws [Mother's in law and Father's in law] also can furnish you with surnames which are different and this helps when finding their marriage.
If you follow the census every 10 years and find family members not there from one census to the next you could either assume they have left home, got married or have died.
This gives you two possibilities you could follow up, marriage or death. Taking into consideration what happened was during the intervening 10 years this gives you a time frame to research.
When you locate details of a birth, marriage or death from the records you should take note of the reference number because this will be needed when you order your copy.
It is possible to order these documents online now so that is good news for anyone wanting these documents who is not living in the UK, or any other country where the birth, marriage or death took place.
I will be following up this information with marriage certificates and possibly death certificates at the earliest opportunity.

I can speak for British certificates, i.e. birth, marriage and death, although I am sure that the US and other countries will include the same details.

On a Birth certificate for instance you are going to see the name of the child, the birth date, the names of the parents and their address at the time of the birth and the occupations of Father and/or Mother. Also you will see the registration district where the birth occurred and was registered.

If you know that this child was the first in the family, you could generally look for the marriage somewhere around 1 year previous. I say somewhere around because it could be that the birth occurred quite soon after the marriage or even longer than a year.

If the child was not the eldest then you can’t get that sort of help unfortunately.

If you can determine the ages of the parents this can sometimes help you guess when they were married. The woman could have been married from age 17 onwards [although further back in time they could have been married at a very early age. The aristocrats sometimes married their children off when they were merely small children in order to gain the family alliance that they wanted].

If you are in the UK and are searching in the St. Catherine’s Index for the particular event, birth, marriage or death, and if you don’t find the details in the first year you look at, just search each year backwards [and forwards] from the year you first searched. You should come across the event you are looking for if it was after 1837.

If we are talking about births, marriages and deaths back to 1837 [in the UK] when registration became mandatory you will also have the benefit of census returns.

The earliest available census would have been 1841 [in the UK] and onwards every 10 years. You might be lucky enough to find an index which would help you locate the family you are searching for, if not you need some idea of where the family lived

You will have access online to UK census records for England and Wales from 1841 to 1911.

The census return would list the Head of the Household, usually the Father, but sometimes the Mother in the case of a widow. The family were listed in order of age and their occupation shown and relationship to the head of the house.

In the earlier census returns there would also be notes on persons who were deaf, mute, or lunatics!

Sometimes you would find people at the house on census night who were not the immediate family, perhaps nieces and nephews, grandchildren, parents or in-laws.

These can also be very useful pieces of information because you would see their surnames and in the case of grandchildren you would know the name of the parent who was not of the immediate family. In-laws [Mother's in law and Father's in law] also can furnish you with surnames which are different and this helps when finding their marriage.

If you follow the census every 10 years and find family members not there from one census to the next you could either assume they have left home, got married or have died.

This gives you two possibilities you could follow up, marriage or death. Taking into consideration what happened was during the intervening 10 years this gives you a time frame to research.

When you locate details of a birth, marriage or death from the records you should take note of the reference number because this will be needed when you order your copy.

It is possible to order these documents online now so that is good news for anyone wanting these documents who is not living in the UK, or any other country where the birth, marriage or death took place.

I will be following up this information with marriage certificates and possibly death certificates at the earliest opportunity.

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Filed under: Family history tips

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