Finding a records in LDS about a name change poss from marriage/divorce

Nycky50

In the UK 1939 register a family member has a hand written notation next to his name of CR283 LDS which from looking up the reason for this it seems to be a name change due to marriage or divorce and the record of which is in the Latter Day Saints Church records which I understand to be on here in Family Search website. There is also a date notation above the CR283 LDS note of 19.9.77 indicating that was when the name change was done.

Yet whether I put the original name in or the 'new' name into the search I cannot find a 1977 record for this person. nor any marriage or divorce record at all. what am I doing wrong?

Adrian Bruce1

@Nycky50 - just to check, we are talking about the images of the original 1939 Register for England & Wales?

Because while I have a reference that says "CR283 is a form that is used when there is a Change of Surname, Forename, or Date of Birth", there is zero chance that "LDS" on an original page of the 1939 Register means "Latter Day Saints". Roughly speaking, the 1939 Register was updated after World War 2 by the National Health Service of the UK, and they will have no knowledge of the LDS Church's records or procedures.

The date of 19.9.77 is indeed probably the date that the change was done in the Register, or perhaps the date that the request was made, and if the medical authorities were playing catch-up, it could have been years after the real world event that triggered the change (e.g. someone changed doctors and said, "Oh no, that's not my name, hasn't been since I got married 5 years ago…").

"LDS" is possibly one of the three-letter area codes - the format of these updates is basically a bit flakey - but "LDA" was the first code for Wallasey in Cheshire and therefore it might be that "LDS" was another area in Wallasey. Unfortunately, I can find nothing to support that idea - if I browse the 1939 in Ancestry, the Wallasey codes run out at LDE.

So basically, there are various possibilities but I would certainly say that if there's nothing in 1977, then the entry is probably a catch-up reflecting a real world event some years earlier.

SerraNola

@Nycky50 - I concur with Adrian's assessment. Typically, the dates noted were either the date on the form or when the notation was made, rather than the actual date of the event.