Genealogy Chat

Frank Brown and Florence Jones, these are such common names there is hundreds. The only info I have is on my grandmothers birth certificate. She was Emily Brown in May 1922 in Aston. Mother and father are Frank Brown and Florence Jones. How do i find them I have had no luck so far. Because they are such common names. Anybody any ideas on how to narrow it down. I would really appreciate it

Helen - the birth certificate should also give you Frank's occupation. You will then need to search for Frank and Florence's marriage, and if you are lucky they will have got married after spouse's surname started to be put on the marriage index (I think it was about 1912?), so you will have to search backwards through the GRO marriage indexes starting with the quarter in which Emily was born, for whichever name you would rather look for - Florence Jones or Frank Brown, find one whose spouse's surname is correct, then look up the matching entry for that surname to see if the first name matches. If you find one in the Birmingham area it will probably be the right one, but to be sure you will have to check Frank's occupation on the marriage cert to see if it matches. And if the address on the birth cert and marriage cert match it will help to confirm you have the right one, but of course if the addresses don't match it doesn't mean you have the wrong one. You could of course keep searching the indexes back to 1912 to see if there is more than one possible marriage. If you only find ones outside the Birmingham area it will be difficult to know which is the right one. Anyway, this should help you get started, but I know it will be difficult because I have some Browns in my tree. Good luck! P.S. If you have any elderly living relatives on that branch of the tree, it would certainly be worth contacting them to ask if they can help. Kate.

Aston,presume B/ham,covered many areas of b/ham.and as a result,there were many parish churches,and several districts that were covered by aston,which area of aston,ie road etc,did they live,then you can locate the church,

Because I am feeling generous (lol) I have taken a look on Family Relatives. I have searched from 1913 (when spouse surname is first included) until 1920 (when Family Relatives stops complete indexing). There was only one result for Frank Brown to a Jones: Brown Frank V - Jones - Bromley.2a 1131 Marriage Q1 1916 As this one is in the ''wrong'' place and he has another forename (beginning with ''V'') I have not looked up the wife's first name, but you could do that on 1837online or whatever and see if the first name is correct...... If it's not the one, unless you know that your grandmother came from a big family I would suggest chcking from 1920 onwards for a few years to see if anything crops up. Otherwise, they might have been married years and the entry might be pre-1913. very good luck Merry