Certificates

[Guy]

In another thread a poster mentioned "Certificates in England and Wales are copies of the entry in the register of birth, marriage or death which have been kept since 1837.".

This is correct to a point but is not the whole truth.
When mentioning Birth, Marriage or Death certificates a certificate is a certified copy of an entry in a register. The register may be as above the civil birth, marriage and death registers but it could also be a baptism, marriage or burial register which may also contain Births, marriages and deaths.
Those registers may go back to 1538.
There are samples of various certificate on the Anguline site at

http://anguline.co.uk/cert/certificates.htm

It should also be mentioned that there are other forms of certificates available baptism, guardianship etc.
Cheers
Guy

[JudithM]

I believe the post you quote above was mine and I agree, for brevity I only described a part of the range of certificates available. I have in my own research come across a fair number of baptism certificates in particular, issued from the church registers, both pre and post 1837 - often it would seem obtained to prove age or settlement at some later date in the person's life.

[Christine in Herts]

Baptism certificates are also requested by some clergy, prior to confirmation, or marriage.

Some employers may have required sight of a baptism certificate of potential new employees.

Christine

[Olde Crone Holden]

It is always worth a look, even if you do have civil certs. At least twice in my research I have found serious differences in the information given to the clergy and that given to the Registrar.

My 2 x GGF, birth certificate obtained and no reason for me to suspect any information on that, he was the fifth of ten children in a long marriage. Eventually, for the sake of completeness, I found the baptisms of him and his siblings. Ermmmmmm.........he was NOT baptised as their son, he was baptised as the illegitimate child of a sister of his father. She died more or less straight after the birth and his uncle and aunt unofficially adopted him, but brazenly registered him as their own child. They had just buried a baby of their own.

I should have realised there was something odd because he did not inherit the farm even though he was by that time the eldest surviving "son".

OC