New GRO search

[PeteW1959]

How accurate is the mother's maiden name in the new GRO search?

I have a chap who married two sisters (not at the same time, one died!) I have him in 1891 with his second wife, and 5 children, what I thought were 3 from his first marriage and 2 from his second.

Looking up the births of the children on the GRO, the first one has TEW as mmn, the second LEAS, I can't find the third, and the last two both TEW. The second one was born 2 years before his first wife died, the third three years after she died and a year before he remarried, then the last 2 after his second marriage.

So was he a bigamist? Was he having an affair? Or is it a mistake in the GRO?

[Guy]

The only way to tell is to purchase the certificates or PDFs and look at what the names are there
Cheers
Guy

[Olde Crone Holden]

Pete

I,be seen plenty of wrong mmn. In myy case it was usually because my rellies were THICK and when asked "mother,s maiden name?" gave the maiden name of their own mother instead of their own maiden name. But there are many other explanations including a mistake in the index. Can you see the scan of the actual GRO record?

OC

[ozgirl]

With bad handwriting I can see Tew being transcribed as Leas. However the only way to be sure is to purchase the birth cert as Guy says.

[Darksecretz]

I have a cert that states MMN as HARTKIN.. when in fact it was LARKIN..lol

[AntonyM]

As Guy says - making assumptions from any index entry is dangerous. You need to get the certificates to check exactly what it says.

One of the things to be careful of and which I come across regularly is people coming up with unlikely stories to explain away inconvenient evidence - usually because they have only looked at the index, or have misinterpreted a certificate.

The "new" GRO indexes were transcribed some time ago as part of a previous GRO project and there are known issues about the standard of transcription that was done (particularly with missing maiden names and infant ages), and the rules used to compile the index are not the same as those used for other versions (such as those on FreeBMD) so you do need to be careful.

[Olde Crone Holden]

AntonyM

In my case, I do know what happened (misunderstanding about whose maiden name was being asked for
) because the maiden name was indeed that of the grandmother, not the mother. No illegitimacy etc involved, just a misunderstanding of what was being asked.

OC

[kylejustin]

Is it possible one of the sisters was married prior? I have coates ancestors whose mmn should be pratt in the index, but i couldn't locate some, as they had mmn harker, her previous married name.

[Mbrady]

You can purchase PDF's now?? wow..thats a great step forward

[PeteW1959]

Thanks for the replies. I don't want to spend money on certificates as this is very distance side branch, and if I had some spare cash there are certificates closer to my direct line that would take priority.

I don't think there are any other marriages, however the family as a whole didn't seem that bothered with the legalities of registration. Other siblings are on census returns as married when they are not, and several children don't appear to have been registered, although they were baptised.

[margaretmarch]

You can purchase PDF's now?? wow..thats a great step forward

PDFs not yet available - there was a pilot project which was limited to 40,000 issues and that was reached very quickly. They are now evaluating the pilot and will be launching a full version and when.

Margaret