Dont' blindly trust information on certificates!

[Elizabeth Herts]

I am collecting BMD certificates for all my direct ancestors, and I haven't got many to buy now.

I thought I would buy the death certificate for my great-great-great-great grandmother who died in 1848 at the ripe old age of 82.

I knew the details of her death as the gravestone had been transcribed:

In memory of GEORGE son
of GEORGE STILLINGS of Skircoat
who died
September 1799, in the
1st year of his age.
Also JAMES his brother
who departed this life
October 25th
1809 in the 10th year of his age.
Also SAMUEL STILLINGS died May 6th
1818
aged 12 years.
Also GEORGE STILLINGS, father
of the above children, who de-
parted this
life Decr 16th 1842
in the 77th year of his age.
Also of SARAH, wife of the above
GEORGE
STILLINGS, and mother of the
above named children who died
on the 25th day of July 1848
aged
82 years.


The certificate arrived, and most of it was correct:

25th July 1848 Bolton Brow Skircoat
Sarah Stillings
Female
60 years
Widow of George Stillings A Corn Miller
Old Age No Medical Attendant
Informant: George Stillings Present at death Bolton Brow Skircoat

(The informant was her son)

So they got her age completely wrong!

I also ordered the death certificate for George Stillings, her husband.
He indeed died on 16th December 1842, Corn Miller, of Old Age. His age was given as 75, slight discrepancy with the gravestone, which says in his 77th year.

It is just as well that I knew Sarah's age because otherwise I could be looking for a christening at the wrong time.

However, I don't know her maiden name as I can't find the marriage of George and Sarah yet!

[Harrys mum]

My great grandfather's birth cert has his fatehr's name incorrect. It is copied from the original so that's wrong as well. I know (sort of) how it happened, but still doesn't sit well.

[Olde Crone Holden]

For complicated reasons, I have three copies of the marriage of my 2 x GGPs.

1.One photocopy from the actual church register
2.One photocopy from the local RO
3.One handwritten modern copy from the GRO.

1. Church entry.
James Holden widower 34, South St, engine driver, father James Holden a brewer
to
Ellen Grimshaw spinster 39, South St, father William Grimshaw cordwainer

2. Photocopy original from local RO.

James Holden widower 39, Smith St, engineer, father William Holden a brewer
Ellener Grimshaw spinster 34 South St father James Grimshaw shoemaker

3. Modern handwritten copy from GRO

James Holden widower 34,engine driver, Smith St, father William Holden a brewer
Ellin Grimshaw spinster 30, Smith St, father William Grimshaw shoemaker.

Fortunately I already knew Ellen's exact age and the name of her father. The addresses of Smith St and South St both existed at the time, so the jury is still out on that.

OC

[Penelope]

Also caution re. MIs as well. According to one local gravestone, someone died on the 32nd of March... If you think about it stone masons were very often just going on reported information - they wouldn't check dates or anything. As people didn;t celebrate birthdays quite so keenly as we do in this more commercial age, if the stonemason is asking a grieving child of someone when they were born, it might be an approximation or even plain wrong info.

My great great grandad and later great grandad routinely fed misinformation to census enumerators (swapping kids' ages, giving one family member 5 entirely different birthplaces across his lifetime!) and I have also had people on censuses report - quite genuinely they come from Village X when records show they were born in Parish Y, and have clearly moved in infancy as subsequent siblings are born in Parish Y so they assume they were, too. People in the 19thC sometimes had no idea what year they were born in, although they'd have a vague idea. And even talking to their kids, they might knock 10 years off (or in the case of my great aunt, once she hit 70 she'd add years on to make herself some more impressively old!) Human nature.

I don't bother with certificates much as I prefer to simply look in parish records and even they can be wrong, too! Also, when we turned up to get the birth certificate for our oldest son (now 20), my husband recognised the girl acting as registrar as someone he'd worked with years before. He was shocked she was a registrar as she wasn't exactly the brightest button in the box. Lots of scope for errors!

[Elizabeth Herts]

I have a contact who might well be able to look up the parish registers for me, so I shall contact him.

There is no doubt that this is my Sarah, however. I do wonder if someone copied the wrong line from the register. I wouldn't have thought son George, already 45 himself, would have put her age down as 60!

I suppose it just proves that we need more than one item of information about a person to back up personal details.

[Janet]

I do think that certificates are good to have as even if the information may not always be correct, there is still much information to be had from certificates of all kinds. Some of the information on my certs may be wrong but then I have had to think around a cert to find other information and few have let me down.

I had a death cert for my great grandfather who died in Cork in 1899 age 59 years so on that basis was born around 1840. However on finding a marriage at 1854 I did wonder if either my marriage was correct or the death age was correct. This led me to some serious researchinhg after some misinformation from a cousin which produced the fact that I did have the correct marriage and death certs but his age at death was given incorrectly when I found his baptism details as being baptised in 1827. I did make assumptions which then forced me into proving I was right or wrong. This has to be healthy genealogy. Another death cert was totally correct and led me on to knowing so much more about his army career as the cert gave me his regiment and as it was signed by a son in law it also gave me the married name of his daughter which marriage I then found on Free BMD so there are many plusses to be gained by obtaining certificates.

Yes, the message has to be, get the certs, but always look at them very carefully to make sure that everything adds up.

The information on any certificate is only going to be correct if the person giving the information has the correct details. My sister in law put down my father's occupation as Radiologist on his death cert, whereas he was actually a radiographer! This will stump people in the future who may well be looking in a medical directory for my father! But he will never be found in a medical directory as a radiographer!

Janet

Incidentally my great grandfather's death was reported by his intelligent son of 40 years of age who was at least the fourth child born!

[Olde Crone Holden]

My father's death was reported by my brother and dad's occupation is "Construction Engineer, retired".

This is not the truth but the Registrar would not accept dad's real job title of Technical Officer, as it did not appear in her list of approved occupations! They hit on Construction Engineer after a lot of discussion about what he actually did and that was the nearest approximation.

Incidentally, I also have two death certs signed by "informant, son". In both cases the "son" was actually a stepson.

All this goes to prove that the more evidence you get, the harder your evidence is! The SoG suggest at least three pieces of evidence of which at least one should be from a primary source.

I do believe certificates are VERY important and are the keystone of research. The certs may contain inaccuracies and downright LIES, but at least you know it is your own liar you have, not someone else's liar!

OC

[Elizabeth Herts]

All this goes to prove that the more evidence you get, the harder your evidence is! The SoG suggest at least three pieces of evidence of which at least one should be from a primary source.

OC

Yes, OC, the SoG's suggestion is a very good one to follow. Luckily for most of my direct ancestors I have a fair amount of information, barring just one. She married one month before civil registration came in, one of witnesses was her guardian, she appeared on the 1841 census with two children and husband, had one more child and died some time before the 1851 census.

I can't find her death anywhere - her name, Sarah White, doesn't help much either. No idea where she was born or who her parents were!!

[Christine in Herts]

I wasted a lot of time looking for a birth for my G-g-mother in the late 1850s, because I had believed her age on her marriage cert - and in the subsequent censuses. Eventually I came to agree with my uncle who'd worked out that she'd been born in Feb 1851. The missing 7 years were, almost certainly, in order to make her marriage at "26" (aka 33!) more acceptable when the groom wasn't quite 21.

Similarly, Errant (Paternal) Grandfather appears to have felt that even his "official" US age of 44 (which should really have been 50) was a bit old to marry a young woman who wasn't quite 20; so he elected - for the duration of the filling out of the cert - to be only 34. Anyone researching him on the basis of that marriage cert will spend a long time finding nothing!

Christine

[Olde Crone Holden]

Yes, one of my 3 x GGMs coolly knocked 13 years off her age in order to appear nearer her second husband in age.

She kept the lie up all her life...but her daughter knew the truth and registered her correct age at death (which is backed up by baptism records and early census info).

Anyone relying on census info for her age will never find her birth.

OC

[Little Nell]

Any experienced family historian will know that all information should be regarded as possibly wrong, whether its on a cert, a gravestone, a census sheet, in a directory or passed on by family members as gospel!

[Anne in Carlisle]

Any experienced family historian will know that all information should be regarded as possibly wrong, whether its on a cert, a gravestone, a census sheet, in a directory or passed on by family members as gospel!

Especially the last one! :D

Anne

[kylejustin]

my 3rd great grandfather either didnt know how old he was, or lied. in 1841 he was 21. in the next census he was 35, then he was 40!!, then 57, then 62, then 73. his wife was just as bad till 1871, when she became consistent!!

another 3rd great grandmother aged one year in a census!!

certs are always giving the wrong info concerning father's name! my great grandma has samuel instead of simon on her marriage, but simon was also a witness, so it was good. on a 2nd great grandad's cert, he says his dad was john, when it was joseph. he was the only david on the census born in the correct place, and joseph was the dad.

a 2nd great grandmother's father was joseph, but the writing on the original cert is so bad it looks like inepes!! if you didnt know what her dad's name was you'd be smushed!! i shudder to think what it would be on the gro copy!!

grandma always says to get three points of evidence for each person, i think it was like that to have your genealogy recognised legitimately.

[Lal]

When I got married in early 1970s, at the first meeting with the Vicar, we were asked our fathers Christian names and my fiance didn't know. He made a guess at John. It was really sad.

His father had died when he was little and his mother had destroyed all evidence of him and never ever talked about him.

John did in fact turn out to be correct - she did confirm it when asked. I suppose it would have been on his birth cert but it would have been easy to get it wrong.

I cannot remember if we had to produce birth certs or not.

[Gwyn in Kent]

Not being able to find any information about the surname BROCKHIS, who supposedly married John Bennett in Sussex in 1829, I sent for the birth certificates of the two of their children born after 1837.
As suspected one gave the mother's name as Rebecca Brockhurst ( say it in Sussex accent !), who I've been able to track back to a baptism at the right time for her given age and place of birth.
My direct ancestor though showed mother as Rebecca GREEN......What?

Unless John went to the distant village and found 2 Rebeccas, born there at the same time and married her in place unknown ( no Rebecca deaths or marriages in their 'home' area, found in parish registers ) I think these Rebeccas are one and the same people, ...but how do you prove that?

Oh...she registered the B birth, husband John ( drunk?) registered the GREEN one and made his mark X.

[Guy]

I am collecting BMD certificates for all my direct ancestors, and I haven't got many to buy now.

I thought I would buy the death certificate for my great-great-great-great grandmother who died in 1848 at the ripe old age of 82.

I knew the details of her death as the gravestone had been transcribed:

In memory of GEORGE son
of GEORGE STILLINGS of Skircoat
who died
September 1799, in the
1st year of his age.
Also JAMES his brother
who departed this life
October 25th
1809 in the 10th year of his age.
Also SAMUEL STILLINGS died May 6th
1818
aged 12 years.
Also GEORGE STILLINGS, father
of the above children, who de-
parted this
life Decr 16th 1842
in the 77th year of his age.
Also of SARAH, wife of the above
GEORGE
STILLINGS, and mother of the
above named children who died
on the 25th day of July 1848
aged
82 years.


The certificate arrived, and most of it was correct:

25th July 1848 Bolton Brow Skircoat
Sarah Stillings
Female
60 years
Widow of George Stillings A Corn Miller
Old Age No Medical Attendant
Informant: George Stillings Present at death Bolton Brow Skircoat

(The informant was her son)

So they got her age completely wrong!

I also ordered the death certificate for George Stillings, her husband.
He indeed died on 16th December 1842, Corn Miller, of Old Age. His age was given as 75, slight discrepancy with the gravestone, which says in his 77th year.

It is just as well that I knew Sarah's age because otherwise I could be looking for a christening at the wrong time.

However, I don't know her maiden name as I can't find the marriage of George and Sarah yet!

Are you relying on the age on the headstone or the age from the death certificate?
Both often contain inaccurate ages.
Cheers
Guy

[Elizabeth Herts]

Guy, I'm not relying on anyone piece of evidence more than the next. However, I have about four sources for her and the rough consensus is that she was born c. 1766. I won't get any further with her unless I find her marriage to George Stillings, and I don't think they came from the Skircoat area originally. George was a Corn Miller.

[Grampa Jim]

My Grandfather's death cert has his age wrong even though the informant was his son, my uncle.

[Penelope]

My great grandfather was a foundling, dumped at an orphanage and later looked after on a 'baby farm' before he was fostered out to a nice family. He had no idea of his real name so he took the foster family's name. Aged 19 he gave himself a different name. According to his wedding certificate he was the same age as his wife - yet in the few photos I have seen he looks 20 years older. He was a notorious conman and would be Tory politician. At one point, his wife my great grandmother consulted a solicitor as she started to doubt her wedding had ever been valid. When we got his marriage certificate we were shocked to find he'd named a father (a fictional man so far as we can tell), gave him a job and everything. Yet my great grandmother only subsequently met the foster family and his real name was something she only (suppsoedly) found out deacdes after they married (that too was probably a lie!) So there you have it - certificates may not just have the minor inaccuracies you'd expect, but also can contain great swathes of lies. In my great grandparents' marriage certificate - names, ages even father's name/profession - all fiction. Maybe you can see why I don't bother with certs as a rule! (This was a different great grandad to the one that gave 5 different birth locations to census enumerators, btw!)

[Elizabeth Herts]

Although I am aware that the information on some certificates could be wrong, I am glad that I have still purchased them because overall I have obtained information that has helped me further in my tree.

For example, the name of an informant on a death certificate, which gives me a son-in-law, a child or a sibling not previously known. The marriage certificates I have bought have many times helped me to get back a generation further by providing the fathers' names and maiden names.

Without certificates I could not have done my OH's tree from scratch. I'm aware that some of the information could be unreliable, but again, I try to back up this information with further evidence, and generally I have been successful.

I think the key is to use a wide variety of sources, wherever possible.

So I shall still go on purchasing certificates and still wait for each one with bated breath!