Since 1st July 1837, every birth, marriage and death in England and Wales has been officially registered at a local Registrar?s Office and a certificate created to record details of the event. These certificates provide crucial evidence for the family historian, not just about the person concerned but also about their relatives. It is possible to purchase duplicates of these certificates, and consequently these should be the first documents that a new family historian should tackle. Why? Certificates record a person?s journey through life, and by careful manipulation of the data they contain, not only should you be able to add additional lines and branches to your family tree, but also begin to understand more about the lives of your ancestors.

The rapid population expansion of the early nineteenth century, coupled with concerns over the implications of rapid urban growth on public health and poverty, lead to the creation of the Office of the Registrar General. Its remit was to collect statistical data on demographic trends, which would be used to govern the country more effectively. One of the most important strands in this policy was the introduction of civil registration for births, marriages and deaths. Local Registration Districts and Sub-Districts were created, initially based on Poor Law Union boundaries, each district covering a defined geographical area. From 1841, these districts were the same as the census districts, allowing you to move effectively from one source to the next when hunting down your ancestors. After three months, each local registry would produce an index of all births, marriages and deaths, and forward this information to the Registrar General?s office. Central indexes incorporating all registration districts were compiled, referenced by the code allocated to every local district.

If you know where an event took place, you can search the local indexes and apply for a duplicate certificate. However, don?t forget that the local and central indexes are not the same, so never order a certified copy from the central register using an index reference obtained from the local registry ? otherwise you will receive the documentation of a complete stranger! The national indexes are stored at the Family Records Centre, London, but can now be viewed in their entirety on this website. To order from the central index, either place a request online at www.gro.gov.uk, make a postal application to the General Registrar?s Office (part of the Office of National Statistics) at Southport or fill out an application form at the Family Records Centre.

In theory, it should be possible to identify the date of any birth in England and Wales between 1837 to date; however in practice this is sometimes harder to achieve. There are several reasons why an event might not be recorded. For a start, errors are known to have occurred during the transfer of data from the district registries to the Registrar General?s Office, and so the central lists may be incomplete or incorrectly indexed. Perhaps more significantly, there was no penalty for non-registration before 1875, and therefore no compulsion to come forward with information. If you can?t find your relatives listed prior to 1875, try looking in local records such as parish or non-conformist baptism records. You should also consider the possibility that they were entered in the indexes under a different first name; we often refer to relatives by their nicknames, pet names or by an abbreviated version. Similarly, the registrar often wrote down what they heard, and so spelling errors might produce variant surnames.

Despite these pitfalls, birth, marriage and death certificates remain the building blocks of family history and can be used to construct a basic family tree. As with all research, start from a known date and work backwards. This may mean looking first of all for the death certificate of a relative to obtain their age, and then using this information to trace their birth certificate. Similarly, if you know when someone got married, order the marriage certificate to find the age of the bride and groom, and then look for birth certificates. Usually, the birth certificate will provide the names of both parents ? including the mother?s maiden name ? and allow you to repeat the process, thus adding a new generation to your family tree.

By Nick Barratt