Who Do You Think You Are Magazine Forum

[stefano]

I was wondering how many birth, marriage and death people on here have. I have 26 birth certificates and 1 or 2 pdfs. 13 marriage certificates and 3 pdfs. 7 death certificates and 1 pdf. Studying your family tree you buy a lot to solve mysteries and make connections.
Sent from my PLK-L01 using WDYTYA Forum mobile app

[Cachalot6972]

Short answer - more than I thought. Births = 14 + 4 pdf; Marriage = 19; Deaths = 25 + 8 pdf. At least the pdf's have saved me £39 !

[AdrianB38]

My principle is simple - in order to put my ancestry on the best footing, I buy all 3 for each of my direct ancestors. Well, back to 1837 in England and Wales, of course.

Otherwise I might have been fooled (as a cousin was) by my GGF who, when in Cheshire, entered his birthplace in the census as Preston because no-one down here had heard of his real birthplace of Penwortham on the opposite side of the river to Preston.

Your cash situation may vary....

Sent from my MotoG3 using WDYTYA Forum mobile app

[brunes08]

I agree with AdrianB38. I have BMD certificates for all my direct ancestors and in many cases for second marriages, siblings - legitimate and illegitimate - and the half siblings. Also copies of Wills. I started tracing my family long before we had access to all the information available on the internet so had to purchase lots of documents just to make sense of, in some cases, confusing relationships. It is my hobby so I do not mind the cost - to a certain extent. In the early days of researching, I travelled to different parts of the country to visit County archives. It is a lot cheaper in comparison nowadays with lots of free sites and GRO pdf certificates. For me, it has been a thoroughly enjoyable, if at times frustrating, journey. It has been a bit like trying to complete a 10,000 piece jigsaw but without a picture to guide me!


Sent from my iPad using Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine Forum mobile app

[meekhcs]

Agree with Adrian, direct line is a must. I have a mixture of certs and pdfs. With the advent of pdfs I am gradually adding more to prove lines. Even with the addition of the search facility I was caught out by a ggg uncle because I was dealing with common surnames.



Sent from my iPhone using Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine Forum mobile app

[KayFarndon]

I never intended to purchase any certificates, but when I began in 1998, a well meaning friend said that I needed my grandfather's birth to be able to go back further. I spent weeks at the local library and I had no idea what I was doing. As microfiche records only give scant details it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I had no experience of family history, no idea where exactly my grandfather had been born and no logic as to how to do this. All I had was his name, which was on my parent's marriage certificate, with not his full name, as I discovered many months later. It took weeks before I realised that I would need my grandfather's death date to work back from, so I knew I had to buy a certificate.

I have not counted how many I have, but the total cost is now into four figures, but I have not regretted a moment of it, as you discover so much from these certificates.

In my opinion a marriage certificate is the best one to get as it has 21 elements to it and can fill many blanks.

We are indebted to the Internet for a lot of free searching. Usually details on a certificate will be correct and they are a marvellous tool for answering questions about a family. It is also brilliant to be able to settle family related questions and arguments about who is who in the family.

[Dene Fisher]

I darn’t count the number of certificates I’ve got & hence the money I’ve spent but I think I’ve learnt something from every one even if it’s for the wrong person.
Certificates can tell us so much more than just the basics, for example death certs can give us the married names of children as they are very often the people who register the death, marriage certs can link to family members because they are very often witnesses at the wedding and birth certs can point us to neighbourhoods where our ancestors lived


Sent from my iPad using Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine Forum mobile app

[AntonyM]

I recently looked at a tree which went back to the early 1600s. Unfortunately the researcher had failed to get the birth certificate of the subject's grandfather (born in the 1880s) and instead made an assumption based on the GRO index and a census entry and worked back from that. They did a great job and found a fantastic amount of documents and detail on the family - unfortunately of course it was entirely the wrong family line, which was obvious once the missing birth certificate was obtained.

Many trees on Ancestry go wrong for the same reason - being built from index entries alone.

[stefano]

My hobby too. Must have spent a few hundred. Love it when it breaks down another wall. Love a new discovery.

Sent from my PLK-L01 using WDYTYA Forum mobile app

[pforkes]

1567 that I have bought (from all over the world).

I have them all scanned in, so counting them was easy.

VERY early on I learned to buy the records and to not make assumptions, having added a few hundred people to my tree who were not actually relatives.

Living in Las Vegas, the GRO can take up to 84 days to get a paper copy to me.