GRO Online Historic Indexes
 

Finally found my grandfather's missing baby brother, who died not long after birth, using the maiden name search - brilliant. It's a bit restrictive in that you can only do one gender at a time and +/-2 years, but it's a very welcome addition nonetheless. You need to sign in to see the search form.....https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/c...ates/Login.asp

"Following successful development and testing, the GRO online
historic birth and death indexes are accessible via our
website from today, 3 November. The indexes have been created
using GRO records which have already been digitised, and
cover birth records more than 100 years old, and death
records up to 1957 (the latest digitised year we hold).
The online indexes, will provide a customer enhancement,
making the indexes more readily available for searching
than the microfiche we currently make available via the 7
public libraries / records offices across England and
Wales. This service will be in addition to, rather than
replacing the facility to search the indexes at the 7
sites. The full set of indexes will still be held and
updated at these sites.
The online index also provides enhancements, to that on the
microfiche, where possible showing mother’s maiden name for
births prior to 1911, and age at death for those records
prior to 1865. There is also the facility to purchase a
certificate.
The index is accessible free of charge via the GOV.UK
website which links to our online ordering site."

Oooh, fantastic!!

If only I knew who I should be looking for!

Well if you know from the 1911 (or in my case, a piece of information from my great aunt) that some children have died and you can't identify them, this is perfect for finding them. OH has also finally found middle names for great uncles with common names, as their mother had a less-common maiden name.

Wow, that's great news! I hadn't heard anything saying it was on its way. Thanks, Rick.

You're welcome. It came as a complete surprise to me too. I guess they could do something really useful with the marriages, if they choose to. I'm really pleased to be able to close off some of those niggling mysteries which could have taken several expensive certificates to solve otherwise.

I'm still waiting for my "verification code" to arrive so that I can actually do a search.

Of course it arrived as soon as I had posted that!

Oh, I see that you have to specify the surname, so you can't search on mother's maiden name only as I was planning to do!

Yes, I realise that, but my mind is a blank as to where I've had this situation and I've never created a list of difficult families. No doubt I have hundreds of people I should be looking for, but don't remember!

Just adding the bride's father's surname would be a good start! Perhaps they are not allowed to add information that isn't included in the index for other years though?

I didn't need any code - I don't know why not.

Perhaps they will allow that later?

Yes, that stumped me too. The lady for whose birth I'm searching was illegitimate and I wanted to see if she had been registered twice.