General Register Office (GRO) – The Nosey Genealogist's: Help Me With My Family Tree

06/07/2023

AT LAST! The General Register Office (England & Wales) makes digital image download of birth and death records available

NEWS: It seems to have been a long time coming! Digital downloads from GRO

image of the GRO website

The General Register Office (GRO) for England and Wales has just announced that family history researchers can now get instant-access images of birth records from 1837-1922 and deaths from 1837-1887.

Civil birth and death registration records from selected years are now available as instant-access digital images via the GRO’s website at: https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/login.asp

Civil registration in this part of the UK began in 1837 for Births, Marriages and Deaths (BMDs) and until now researchers could not get an instant-access digital image.

Family history researchers have previously had to make do with ordering records as either a print record for £11, or as a PDF for £7. At this price you would need the GRO index references and then have a wait of up to four working days for orders to be despatched.

However, the GRO has now launched a scheme for births from 1837 to 1922 and deaths from 1837 to 1887 to be available as digital images (JPEGS). The online service is the cheapest and simplest way of placing an order but you do still need to order with the GRO index reference number. Their website says that it takes around 10 minutes and you’ll need a debit or credit card and the JPEG cost £2.50.

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06/01/201906/01/2019

General Register Office prices rise in February 2019

For family history researchers, as in every other field, price rises are inevitable even if unwelcome when on a tight budget. I have always recommended in my course that researchers buy the relevant birth, marriage or death certificate and continue to do so. This is because these copy documents help to make sure that researcher get access to the important information contained on them and to be as sure as we can be that we are adding the correct person into our family tree. Even with the increase in certificate prices that The General Register Office (GRO) has announced, I still stand by that advice.

To be fair, to this government department, this is the first increase in certificate costs since 2010 and so it may be said that it is only to be expected.

Copy wedding certificate arrives in post

From the 16th February 2019 we now know that the cost of print certificates will increase from £9.25 to £11, and from £23.40 to £35 for the priority service, which provides delivery on the next working day. The same costs will also apply if family history researchers order the certificate from their local register office.

In October 2017 the GRO had introduced a pilot scheme which allowed researchers to order PDF copies of the digitised birth and death records for £6 each. This scheme was a success and after an estimated 79,600 PDF orders rolled in to the GRO in three months, they extended the scheme indefinitely.

The cost of PDF records will also see a rise this February as they now increase to £7 each, with priority deliveries available at £45.

A new charge is also being introduced for researchers who make an application to the GRO for a certificate copy without knowing the index reference. While this has not been charged for to date, there will now be an additional non-refundable fee of £3 in exchange for GRO staff carrying out a search of the index. Also the GRO will require a fee of £3.50 where they cannot fulfil an order because the staff cannot locate the record with the information provided by the researcher.

Ancestor's wedding certificate

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11/12/201611/12/2016

Finding English or Welsh ancestors in the birth records

Nick-Thorne-150x150

In this video tutorial I look at the 3 mistakes that people new to family history research make when trying to find their English or Welsh ancestors in the births marriages and death indexes published by the General Register Office (GRO).

The first and biggest mistake that people make is to not buy the certificate!

So why do you need to buy the certificate?

Well just assuming that you’ve got the right person, because their name and maybe the place seems right to you, is opening yourself up allowing a huge error creep in your family tree. You could end up adding the wrong John Smith to your family tree and from then on you’re going to be tracing the wrong ancestor. And just think of all that wasted time that you’re going to spend.

By buying a certificate this will provide more information that helps you to check if you’ve got the right person. In the video I set out to find an ancestor of my own. I look in the correct quarter in 1865 for Sydney Thorn and I know that he spelt his name with a ‘Y’ and not an ‘I’.

looking for english ancestors birth records

But if you look carefully at the index page there are two Sydney Thorns. One in Westbury and the other in Totnes. The index is providing me with the information that I need to buy the certificate but what to do of I didn’t know which one of the two Sydneys was the correct one?

I could end up tracing a family tree that doesn’t belong to me!

The next mistake that many people make when trying to find their English or Welsh ancestors in the births marriages and deaths indexes is using information that they’ve gleaned from somebody else’s family tree and that information has been unchecked against the primary records. So if you are new to this fascinating passtime please please don’t do that.

Whatever you do, make sure that you use the information in the other person’s tree as a pointer towards finding the source and check it to make sure that you have got the right people.

My next tip is to beware of looking in the wrong place, or perhaps being too narrow in your thinking of where an ancestor should be. If you are looking for birth and you think that it should have been in a particular parish and you just can’t find it there, well widen your search to other churches and parishes because our ancestors certainly did move around. I’ve got people in my family tree that I thought should have been in the Devon indexes and yet I found them up in Hampshire while others turned up in London.

So do please broaden out your research to other parishes and towns.