Tameside Family History

Family History Research

Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates

There are two places where indexes to birth, marriage and death certificates are held:

The National General Register Office (GRO) Indexes
Local Register Offices

The national indexes are created from quarterly returns from local register offices and have been transcribed three times before the final indexes are created and are, therefore, open to human error at all these stages.

There is an excellent article written by Tony Foster from the Lancashire BMD project giving an insight into how approximately 1 million entries from 1837-1899 could be missing or mistranscribed in the GRO indexes. www.lfhhs.org.uk/help/factsh/lbmd.htm

Important Dates in Civil Registration

1st July 1837 - Civil Registration in England and Wales begins.

Until 1848 Ashton Registration District also covers Oldham as Ashton & Co - then becomes Ashton 8d.

1852 - GRO References change from Roman Numerals.

1866 - GRO References include Age at Death.

1875 - Implementation of the Birth and Death Act of 1874.
a) Compulsory Registration of Births (parents of guardians responsibility).
b) Fines for non-registration/penalties for late registration (42 days to register).
c) Illegitimate births - father must be present for his name to appear.
d) Deaths to be registered within 5 days, instead of 8 as previously.
e) Medical Certificate in respect of cause of death required.

1898 - Nonconformist and Catholic churches can appoint an 'Authorised Person' to register marriages, removing the need for the registrar to attend.

September Quarter 1911 - GRO Indexes include Mother's maiden name.

March Quarter 1912 - GRO Marriage Indexes include Spouse's Surname.

1st July 1927 - Introduction of the Register of Still Births.

1927 a) Introduction of the Adopted Childrens' Register.
b) Re-registration of illegitimate births allowed if parents susequently marry each other.
c) Registrar's Certificate/Coroner's order required before a burial/cremation of a body.

1929 a) Legal Age of marriage increased from 14 (males) and 12 (females) to 16 for both but parental consent still required up to the age of 21.
b) Functions of civil registration transferred to Local Authorities.
c) Newly appointed Registration Officers paid salaries.

1946 GRO Registration District numbers change - Ashton 8d becomes Ashton 10b.

1947 Short Birth Certificates introduced.

1969 a) Format of Birth and Death Certs changed from landscape to portrait.
b) Age of majority reduced to 18.
c) Reregistration of births of illegitimate children to include name of the father irrespective of whether the parents marry.

June Quarter 1869 Death Indexes show Date of Birth instread of Age at Death.

1974 Tameside Registration District formed.

1975 Adult adopted people allowed access to information on original birth certificates.

1984 GRO Indexes changed to annual compilations.

Cheshire BMD Project - (FREE website)

NOW NEARLY ONE AND A HALF MILLION TAMESIDE REGISTRATIONS ON-LINE

Pioneered by the Family History Society of Cheshire, a team of volunteers has been working for nine years now, with the co-operation of the staff at Tameside Register Office, towards getting all the Birth, Marriage and Death indexes for the whole of the Tameside area available for searching on-line via the Cheshire BMD project. The Cheshire BMD Project aims to make its indexes the most accurate source anywhere because they are checked against the original entries in the original registers. This local project also includes significantly more information than the national one, therefore helping to avoid applying for the wrong certificates.

BIRTHS:

More than 600,000 births are now on-line covering all the Tameside sub registration districts from 1837 until 2009. Bob Kirk's team is now revisiting the birth registrations to add in the mothers' maiden names, and Newton and Godley, and Mottram-in-Longdendale are now on-line. This does not happen on the national GRO registers until 1911 Just added 19th June the mothers' maiden names for Stayley 1837-1882.

* CONGRATULATIONS BIRTHS ARE NOW COMPLETE 1837-2009 *

MARRIAGES:

All marriages, totalling more than 250,000, which occurred in any Tameside Churches and Chapels and all Civil Marriages up until 1974 are now on-line. In addition all Civil Marriages and those which took place in Church of England Churches are complete up until 2009. The Cheshire BMD project provides details of both parties to the marriage and where possible where it actually took place. The national GRO indexes don't give both surnames until 1912, nor do they give you any clues as to venue.

* just the marriages in Nonconformist Churches and Chapels 1974-2009 left to add *

For much more detail about marriage venues in Tameside and for the rules about where marriages could take place under civil registration click here to see a complete list of Marriage Registers held at Tameside Register Office.

DEATHS

More than half a million deaths are now on-line from 1837-2009 including the age at death. The GRO indexes do not include the age at death until 1866.

* CONGRATULATIONS DEATHS ARE NOW COMPLETE 1837-2009 *

To reduce the risk of any transcription errors, all the entries in the Cheshire BMD Project have been checked against the original registers. Another big bonus with Cheshire BMD is that it splits the search results into individual sub-registration districts, therefore helping you to define your search results more accurately.

Entries also have an individual reference number in the top right hand corner which when clicked takes you to an intermediary search summary screen, clicking the reference number again on any of these will take you to a partially completed application form to print off ready to send to the relevant register office.

When looking for Birth, Deaths or Marriages in the Tameside region of East Manchester go to the CheshireBMD web site at:

http://www.cheshirebmd.org.uk/ Be sure to use 'Tameside' in the region field.

You can order Tameside certificates by post by printing off the application form, or by credit card on-line at:

PAYMENTS: http://www.tameside.gov.uk/forms/certificatepay.php3

Tameside Register Office
Town Hall
Dukinfield
Cheshire
Tel: 44 (0)161 342 5032
e-mail: tameside.registrars@tameside.gov.uk

LOCAL REGISTER OFFICE CERTIFICATES COST LESS

Certificates cost £9.00 from Local Register Offices and £9.25 from the GRO at Southport. Remember though that local BMD projects are helping to make it less likely that you will order the wrong certificate and that the GRO at Southport even charge you half price when they can't find the relevant certificate.

Other counties have joined the project incuding, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, West Midlands, North Wales, Bath , Berkshire, Wiltshire and the North East of England. Please go to the UK BMD Project for more information. These are now cross database searchable by clicking on Local BMD and then UKBMDsearch. Check the coverage pages for other areas, since this project is not neccesarily as advanced in other registration districts. It's no use complaining that you can't find a birth for someone in say 1930, when these have only been checked and uploaded up until 1910.

Free BMD - (free website)

This is your next best place to search if your ancestors are not yet covered by one of the local BMD projects.

Another extremely useful project whereby it is hoped eventually to transcribe all the General Register Offices (GRO) indexes of Births, Marriages and Deaths and make them searchable on-line. The GRO indexes are compiled from quarterly returns sent by Local Register Offices and are the same as those available to view on microfilm at Family History Centres and Local Record Offices. The FreeBMD Database was last updated on Fri 13 Aug 2010 and currently contains 189,058,797 distinct records (240,932,526 total records). Getting to be virtually complete up until 1935 and pushing on towards 1949.

Coverage can be a little patchy, most years are complete whilst others have hardly been started you can check this by clicking on the Information page and then on Statistics. The reference numbers quoted, in this instance, are different from those at the UK BMD project, and are the ones to quote when ordering from the General Register Office at Southport.

The General Register Office
PO Box 2
SOUTHPORT
Merseyside
PR8 2JD
Tel: 44 (0) 870 243 7788

Ancestry - (subscription website)

Ancestry uses the FREE BMD indexes up until 1915 and then their own individually indexed entries up until 2007. The Ancestry.com Library Edition is available to use free of charge in many libraries.

Find My Past.com - (subscription website)

Similar to Ancestry but also includes registrations notified to Army Chaplains and the British Consular records of Births, Marriages and Deaths which occurred abroad. Here, though, the indexes only cover a range of surnames on each page and are not individually indexed. Find my Past is available to use at the Family History Society of Cheshire's Alderley Edge Research Centre. Find My Past are now individually indexing all their entries starting with birth registrations which are ow on-line.

BMD Index.Co.Uk - (subscription website)

Rival to the above sites - £5 for three month's subscription, £14.95 for 12 months, fully surname searchable. The entire GRO indexes are now searchable on-line.

Family Relatives – (subscription website)
Possibly not the best subscription site for birth, marriage and death certificates, but full subscription is only £30 per year and has a growing collection of Parish Registers, Directories, Military and Medical records.

Certificates On-line

Offers the ability to appy directly on-line for certificates from the General Register Office at Southport - excellent site and the best way of ordering GRO certificates. Cheaper and Quicker than applying by post.

It is still possible to search through the National GRO Indexes even if you don't have access to a computer or don't want to subscribe to one of the pay sites above, either at:

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For more details about Civil Registration and Useful Addresses visit the Family History Section pages on the Greater Manchester County Record Office website.

For a full list of registration districts in England and Wales click here.

For an excellent detailed guide to the legislation which governs what should appear in the columns of birth, marriage and death certificates, see Barbara Dixon’s Certificate Tutorial Page:

Some useful webpages:
The Etymology of Given Names
Old English and Latin Given Names
Old Medical Terms