Genealogy Chat

Hi everyone. Can anyone help on how I can find out about another child that my parents had. There was always only my Brother 1939 and I 1941. I can recall my Mother (now deceased) mentioning that there was another child that died. This child was never mentioned other than that, so I don't know whether it was a he or she. Any help would obviously be appreciated. Yours. (G)

You will need to look through the births on Ancestry's Beta Index for a birth with your surname and mother's maiden name of whatever your mother was called. Start from when your parents were married and look in every qtr. If you think the child might have been born before they married you will also have to look at births with your mother's maiden name. This is the address you need:- http://www.ancestry(.)co.uk/search/rectype/vital/freebmd/bmd.aspx remove brackets My husband's parents had a child that hubby knew about but the baby was never mentioned. We found that it was a boy who was born 2 months prematurely almost exactly a year before my husband was born and had the same name as my husband (they were both named after their grandfather). The baby only lived 12 hours. Hubby found it strange to think the child had his name before him. Kath. x

The birth indexes for those years have the mother's maiden name, so if you go through each quarter trying to find a birth with your surname and your mother's maiden name in the right area then hopefully you'll find out. (Hope the names aren't Smith and Jones though!) Janice

Hi, Perhaps you could search the bmds on Ancestry looking for the same surname and maiden name as your own. Heather

any idea of date.were they younger or older then you. Ancestry is still free to search and the mums maiden name will be listed so its a trawl thro the records I think. Shirley

First thoughts... Does the likely county have its own BMD site - some have quite modern records transcribed. Otherwise... Assuming you're not dealing with a stillbirth (different procedure - see GRO website), if I were looking, I'd wade through the Ancestry beta searchable index images while they're free. You know the family surname, you have an idea of likely possible place(s) and date-boundaries, you know your mother's maiden name(?) - so long as you aren't dealing with Smith, Brown, Jones and such, you stand some kind of chance of getting a shortlist for the birth record. Then you'd have to try each name for a death record within (?) 18 months, say - again you'd be looking for a very young child in a particular area (approx). That should give you a very shortlist - hopefully. With that, the cert-buying would be needed to narrow own the last few - presumably one at a time until you were confident you'd found him/her. In all the process, don't forget to note down ones that are excluded only because they're in the wrong area - just in case they're needed after all. Christine