Probably another dumb question!

[Muggins in Sussex]

When I find a birth registration in Ancestry, FreeBMD etc, is it possible to work out the sub-district from the reference?

Also, I'm not really sure what a "sub-district" is -can a parish straddle different sub-districts?

Thanks

I've been getting increasingly confused and dizzy all afternoon :confused:

[Anstey Nomad]

Would you like to give us an example?

AN

[kiterunner]

I think it will be similar to how you can (apparently) work out where a marriage took place, except you don't have to worry about going down as far as parish level:

https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Civil_Registration#Using_the_indexes_in_Fr eeBMD.C2.A0to_find_where_a_marriage_took_place

But I've never tried to do either.

[kiterunner]

If it should happen to be Cheshire that you're looking at, their own BMD site tells you which parishes are /were in each sub-district:
http://www.cheshirebmd.org.uk/subdists.php

[ElizabethHerts]

I don't know how she did it, but a couple of years back Merry miraculously found the death registration of my ancestor Sarah White who died somewhere in the Hampshire/Sussex/Surrey area! She worked out by the references which was the most likely death. This was in 1843 so we didn't even have the luxury of age information.

Merry is a research genius as far as I'm concerned!:D

[HarrysMum]

I don't know how she did it, but a couple of years back Merry miraculously found the death registration of my ancestor Sarah White who died somewhere in the Hampshire/Sussex/Surrey area! She worked out by the references which was the most likely death. This was in 1843 so we didn't even have the luxury of age information.

Merry is a research genius as far as I'm concerned!:D



I will agree with that last sentence.

[Merry]

*blushes* :o

My technique only works for deaths and births before 1911. (and it doesn't always work either!!)

[Muggins in Sussex]

Thanks everyone -my internet connection kept going last night :mad:

What I meant, AN, was if I was looking for, say births in Altrincham sub-district, is there any way of telling from the page numbers when I look at the births in Bucklow (which was Registration District for Altrincham at the time), which of those births was in Altrincham.

Kite, many thank for the links (not sure how you guessed I was looking at Cheshire :d)

I have just tested the method from Family Search on 3 Altrincham certs I have. The first was a 1915 marriage, and it seemed to work perfectly as the marriage showed on page 2 of the date range. I also tried it out on 2 birth certs (1915 & 1919) - I am not so sure it works with those, as one was about a tenth of the way into date range, and the other about a sixth of the way in.

I'll test some more births certs when I can, but have to go to work soon :mad:

[Merry]

I think it will be similar to how you can (apparently) work out where a marriage took place, except you don't have to worry about going down as far as parish level:

https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Civil_Registration#Using_the_indexes_in_Fr eeBMD.C2.A0to_find_where_a_marriage_took_place

But I've never tried to do either.

I don't know if that method would work for births and deaths as for marriages their would be a return for each C of E parish church in the whole district and they would be put into alphabetical order by the GRO before indexing, as descried in that FS article (I note that article didn't worry about civil marriages or registrar attended marriages - I would like to know if there was a common format for slotting them in at the beginning or end of the alphabet.).......but for births and deaths the entries for each sub-district would be indexed independently of each other (at least I think they are), so you would need to know which parishes are in which subdistrict first, which woud defeat the object of the exercise. I don't know if the index entries for each sub-dstrict for births and deaths are recorded in sub-district alphabetical order or not. I imagine they are......

Of course as Altrincham is in Cheshire it really doesn't matter! lol

[Asa]

Merry, if I'm understanding your question right, civil and non con marriages are always the highest numbers in the quarter, after the C of E parishes.

[Merry]

Thanks Asa, I didn't know that :)

[Asa]

Just to make it clear, civil and non con marriages are the higher numbers in each district :)

[Olde Crone]

Oh lor Asa, that doesn't help ME - I have always had a problem with the phrase "higher number" - I never know what that means, is it Ace high or Ace low, lol, in other words, do you mean ONE is a high number, or ONE is a low number?

OC *in dimwit mode*

[Asa]

One is a low number, OC:) I spent many many hours at the LMA going from FreeBMD on a pc to the reels and back to try and work out which church a marriage was in - *really* helpful system in London.

So if I was looking at a marriage in Islington in March qtr 1883, the earlier page numbers - such as 303 would be likely to be something like St Andrew Barnsbury and a high number like 567 might be St Thomas Islington or a civil or non con marriage. Obviously 'big' churches like St Mary Upper Street would have a lot of pages per quarter....

[Asa]

In fact, having looked at those page numbers on Ancestry, 303 is Christ Church Highbury Grove (Christ coming alphabetically before St) and 567 doesn't appear so civil, RC etc

[Olde Crone]

Thanks Asa.

OC