Genealogy Chat

See below...

I'm sure there are people on here who have experience of going to local register offices and searching the indexes for births and deaths. Please could someone tell me how they are arranged, typically? For example, are they arranged by registration district then year? Reg district, year then first letter of surname? Something else? The reason I'm interested is because I want to order several birth and death certificates dated 1837 to 1841 for a fairly unusual surname - Quibell or Quible - from the Lincoln register office (not sure why, but they appear to handle the historical certificate requests for the whole of Lincolnshire). I have all the GRO index entries, but can't read some of the faded or obscured handwritten page numbers, hence the reason for ordering from the local register office. I strongly suspect that there may be more entries of death for this name at the register office than made it to the GRO, so this is the real question: Would it be unreasonable to ask the register office to see if there are any other entries of birth and death for that name, in a particular year range, while they are processing my order for known entries? Or are the indexes too complicated? I am trying to get out of needing to go to the register office myself and paying the £18 search fee... but maybe I'm asking too much, lol Chris

Christine have you got these records from freeBMD? Births Jun 1839 (>99%) Quibell Jane Sleaford 14 490 Births Sep 1839 (>99%) Quibell Joseph Lincoln 14 441 Births Mar 1840 (>99%) Quibell Mary Sleaford 14 312 Births Mar 1841 (>99%) Quibell Elizabeth Lincoln 14 473 Georgina.

And the Deaths.... Deaths Sep 1837 (>99%) QUIBELL Joseph Newark 15 334 Deaths Mar 1838 (>99%) Quible Elizabeth Glanford Brigg 14 235 Deaths Jun 1838 (>99%) Quibell George Gainsboro' 14 205 Quible Thomas Spalding 14 334 Deaths Mar 1839 (>99%) QUIBELL William Sleaford 14 346 QUIBLE Benjamin Spalding 14 351 Deaths Mar 1840 (>99%) QUIBLE Elizabeth Glanford Brigg 14 264 Georgina.

Hi Georgina, Thanks very much for looking, yes I have got these, but just as an example, if you look at the actual image for the 3rd entry on your births list, Mary Quibell, Mar Q 1840, Sleaford, would you say that the page number is indeed 312, or do you think it's actually 512? Then there's the death of George, Jun Q 1838, Gainsborough. Is this 203 or 205 on the image? Very difficult to tell, this one. This is the problem, or part of it. :-) Chris

I THINK the local RO will charge you a search fee for this. But you never know.... The ones I have seen are arranged by area (registration district) and deaths are complicated in that hospital deaths are filed in a separate book - but this is a modern thing of course, and won't affect your search. So, they would have to look through several books for each year I think. Still, it wouldn't hurt to send off an oily email, begging for help and explaining the complication of the spelling of the surname - it might just land in the inbox of a bored registrar! OC

The local office won't have any interest in the GRO numbers so if they are willing to search for the different spellings within the quarter, you should be lucky. Gwyn

Thanks OC. It sounds like an e-mail maybe worth a try, but if it comes down to paying a search fee anyway, perhaps I should 'treat' myself to a day at the register office. Thinking about it, if they have the whole county's indexes in the one building, it could be worth hauling myself out there. :-D Chris

Hi Gwyn, Yes, I'm coming to the conclusion it would be worth a try, I just wasn't sure whether the entries are arranged per quarter, or by some other period of time. At one of the register offices I have actually visited I got the briefest glimpse at the index book, as the registrar was confirming the entry with me, and I didn't see how it was arranged, apart from it appeared to be indexed by surname. They can only say ooh sorry no, far too busy! Chris

In years gone by the registrars at my local office used to be very helpful and would hand over any number of indexes for people to take to a comfortable room and peruse at their leisure. As interest in family history increased and more people were turning up to view them, they would only allow limited access, e.g. records covering a five year period, and only during their least busy periods of the day. Now, as interest has become phenomenal, they won't allow access at all and charge a fee for looking on someone's behalf. Similarly, they won't now produce a copy of a certificate over the counter, which was never a problem up until about two years ago. Even if someone is not absolutely certain that a marriage entry they have found (perhaps on a website) is the right one, they (the staff) insist that the certificate request is made in writing, accompanied by the cheque and some other details if the customer wishes. They will then return the cheque in the customer's SSAE if the entry doesn't match the additional details supplied. This can be inconvenient at times, but I suppose it's one of the unavoidable results of the success of genealogy.

Oh dear, Amanda, where is your local office? I don't *think* this is the case at Lincoln as they still show the fee for the public searching their indexes up to a maximum of 6 hours. I hope this isn't about to change. :-( Chris

Hi Christine I see what you mean about the GRO numbers, I would say the one for Mary's birth in 1840 was 512 not 312. The reference number for George's death does look like 203 to me but as you said it is very hard to be 100% sure. Georgina.