GRO Birth records with Mother's maiden name -- very useful, please add

Rod Watson

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.

Adrian Bruce1

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.

gasmodels .

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.

WV2

The GRO requires a surname to search for birth records, in order to reveal the MMN, but we don't always know that surname.

It would be useful to have MMN listed for search purposes. For example where the mother's married name is unknown, a search in birth records solely using MMN would reveal any of her children. I am researching an ancestor who did not marry but for the birth registration of her children, invented different married names and gave each child the surname of her invented husband. It was only chance that I came across the children that survived infancy, but it's likely she had others who died young, as so many did in the 1890s.

WV2

I have just experimented with the GRO search and discovered I can put in the MMN and then for the surname of the baby, use a wildcard eg A* for all surnames beginning with A etc. Unfortunately just using * does not produce any results. Then I discovered I can just type in A, which is quicker. Along with 'phonetically similar'. Obviously exact match can't work.

Edit: doesn't work completely, sadly. Doesn't deliver all the surnames beginning with a particular letter. Shame.

Paul W

Further to Adrian's comments, the GRO indexes only show mother's maiden name to 1923. FreeBMD show this detail from 1911, but their records appear to be complete only until 1990. (See graphs on website for coverage of BMD records.)

I don't know how FreeBMD obtained permission to publish the maiden names (when not even the GRO does so for the last hundred years), but FamilySearch would probably need to have a contract with Find My Past (not sure about its coverage) and possibly the GRO in order to publish the pre-1911 details. (As suggested, maiden names do appear on existing FamilySearch records from 1911.

I just checked and found FamilySearch birth registration records go through to 2005 (showing mother's maiden name), but coverage appears to be quite patchy for the 2000s. However, FS appear to use two sources for their records: some appear to be obtained through the local registry office (these often include a postcode relating to the event) whereas most do appear to be the same as the GRO version.

For records up to 1990 I always compare GRO and FreeBMD versions. I have found some very poor indexing on the GRO site and have needed to report them to the GRO. (Unlike with FamilySearch, there is the facility to report errors and omissions to both the GRO and FreeREG.)

One further point is that the mother's maiden name can have variant spellings, or not even be recorded with the same (or variant) surname: I have found some records have the surname of a first husband listed, instead of the true maiden name, so one cannot rely 100% of finding a child's birth by way of the mother's maiden name. (The eldest child / children - say listed in a census record - might have been born illegitimately to the mother, or be the product or a previous relationship of either of the parents.)

In summary, I have found checking the GRO / FreeBMD websites an excellent way of constructing families (especially finding children born to a particular couple, but dying before the next census). But there are pitfalls in doing this, which could allow some children's births to remain unnoticed.

One final warning - things might not always be how they appear: I have happily added children to a relationship, only to later discover that two brothers married two sisters, so I have needed to detach / correct these relationships in Family Tree!