GRO Birth records with Mother's maiden name -- very useful, please add
GRO Birth records often contain mother's maiden name (as per findmypast.com). However, familysearch and ancestry don't. Maiden name is very useful for identifying little ones passing between censuses. Sometimes, I have also identified a difficult to find marriage. Please add maiden name to the birth records. For example, see Clara Eliza May 1872 Tendring, Essex, England mother's maiden name Living (currently only on findmypast.com). When I find a person (searching last name and maiden name) that wasn't in the census, I look for a death -- almost always it is clear they died young and belong to the family. Maybe, just touting the ability to search maiden name records will help others.
Comments
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For birth registrations in England & Wales, the Mother's Maiden Name should appear in all 1837-1919 birth registration indexes on the England & Wales General Register Office site on https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/login.asp For 1920 onwards, I think that the printed GRO indexes already include the MMN and therefore MMN will be in all sorts of sites for those dates.
The GRO site is a free site, though registration is needed. So you don't need to go to FindMyPast - although as the GRO site's search experience is pretty hard work, I can't blame anyone with access to FMP from using that site.
Given that the MMN is freely available on the GRO site, I'm not sure that I'd prioritise getting it into FamilySearch myself - particularly if FS would have to pay the GRO for access to their indexes. Not sure how FMP have done it but I wouldn't be surprised if they paid the GRO as the data is not otherwise available.
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I agree that FamilySearch has other issues that seem to be a higher priority than adding the mother maiden name to existing records. As Adrian has indicated the GRO records are online and free to use after you have registered. The search is somewhat more difficult to use but I find it to be usable and very helpful in documenting a family using the surname and the mothers maiden name to find all of the children. Why spend time duplicating information that is freely available just so that one does not need to access another website.
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