Genealogy Chat

I know from the 1911 census that my maternal great grandparents had 11 children 5 of whom died in infancy. By looking at other census years and obituaries in the local paper , and in one case a lucky guess I have managed to track down all but one of the children.I have made a list of the children who were born and died in the area over the appropriate years but this leaves me with several hundred names ( that comes of being called Jones !) . Is there a way of finding my relative from this long list without ordering 100 death certificates ?

You can look on the GRO site for births and it will show mmn before 1911

By elimination on births years and deaths you already know you may see a gap where another child could have been born and died

Plus you can confine your search to area of the births already known

Use this site for births (and deaths) - you have to register but it's free otherwise.

Gives mmn Q3 1837 to 1917 and ages at death 1837 to 1957 - (freebmd and commercial sites from 1911 - births - and 1866 - deaths)

A bit fiddly as you have to pick a year and can search 2 years either side of that at a time - so you can do 5 year blocks really. You also have to specify male or female each time too. (Watch out for alternate spellings too)

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/Login.asp

Birth and death certificates can be purchased for £6 - pdf versions to your own computer and can be downloaded. Fine if you don't need then for official purposes and a saving of £3.25

can you tell us your gt.grandmothers maiden name

Mother's maiden name Lizzie Heath, father George Frederick Jones but sadly children born between 1887 probably 1903 so before the mother's surname was included on the registration.

Thanks to all, I didn't know this facility existed on the GRO website, I have successfully tracked down the missing baby.

Glad you got there Alison. It's really useful and "relatively" new. Brought out as a pilot version with the £6 price, stopped and then restarted with an indefinite end date now.

My g grandma said she had 13 children on the 1911, I'd only come across 10. The other 3 had been born and died between census, but I found them. More fun was the g. uncle - surname Clark/e who married a Clark/e.

One thing I didn't say is that they are unable to distinguish between weeks/months/ years for age at death. The column heading is age in years, so you have to allow for that if you're expecting a very young death. 4 years could be 4 months etc!

Greyhost - it was true that in the early days, deaths of kids aged < 2 years showed age in months, but they've now "corrected" those entries so the age is always in years.