Applying for Birth Certificates

P. Breathnach · 24-04-2011 1:33pm #1

Both herself and I are trying to track family movements late in the 19th century. One resource that would seem to be useful is the birth certificates of the children of the people for whom we are trying to fix locations. We have tracked the index references of many of those births via the LDS site.

The next stage would be to complete and submit the application, so I downloaded the GRO form. And ran into a wall. Because one of the mandatory fields is "Address of Place of Birth". So the very thing for which we want the certificate is a requirement for requisitioning it!

I can understand that the GRO need enough data to track and deliver the correct certificate, but we have done the tracking work by researching the indices.

Suggestions for workarounds would be welcome.

shanew · 24-04-2011 3:08pm

The only details the GRO need for research certs are the name, year/quarter (older records only have a year ref.), volume and page numbers and type of record.

Other than your own details and payment option dont worry about the details on the order form... it's designed for more modern certs used for legal purposes.

You can attach the details of the certs you require on a separate page, and attach this to the order form.

Shane

P. Breathnach · 24-04-2011 3:50pm

Thanks, Shane. I was hoping that that would be the answer, but you never know when dealing with a bureaucracy.

So I can use one form to apply and pay for a number of certificates. That's convenient.

shanew · 24-04-2011 4:13pm

ask for research certs on your order - they are photocopies of the register and are cheaper than legal transcript certs. (€4 Euro as far as I remember). These certs are handy if any of the writing on the record is difficult to read - as you can then upload scans for people to try to decipher.

Shane

P. Breathnach · 26-04-2011 2:46pm

Applications sent today.

In preparing them, I discovered cases where there was more than one registration of somebody with the given name, surname, place and year of birth in which I was interested, and I had no way of identifying which was a member of the family that I am researching. It looked as if I might have to purchase redundant records.

I phoned the GRO and asked if I gave them two index references, they would select the one with a particular set of parents and give me that one only (and charge for that one only). The answer was yes. So it boils down to a bit of collaboration: I do some of the digging, and they co-operate with me in identifying which of the records is relevant to my requirements.

That's good, and I report on it here to give them proper credit, and for the information of people who find themselves with a similar problem.

pinkypinky · 26-04-2011 3:42pm

That's good news that they'll help you out with the parents' bit but I wonder will they charge you the search fee for that? It's only an extra €2.

P. Breathnach · 26-04-2011 4:34pm

pinkypinky wrote: »

That's good news that they'll help you out with the parents' bit but I wonder will they charge you the search fee for that? It's only an extra €2.

We'll see soon enough, and I'll report back. My inference was that they would not. Essentially what I am asking them to do is look at two records in the same volume, and copy the one with a given set of parents.

True, the amount involved is small enough, but I am ordering a batch of certificates in order to trace the location history of the family. The costs mount up fairly fast.

Herself will be undertaking similar exercises with two large families, so avoiding the search fees would be good.

[With or without search fees, the service is great value for money.]

To illustrate, this is one of my requests:
=====
Whichever one of the following two is the child of John Walsh and Teresa Higgins:

name: Mary Walsh
registration district: Rathdrum
registration quarter and year: Apr - Jun 1878
volume number: 2
page number: 999

name: Mary Walsh
registration district: Rathdrum
registration quarter and year: Apr - Jun 1878
volume number: 2
page number: 1018
=====

P. Breathnach · 08-05-2011 8:38am

Reporting back on progress (after a delay due to my being away for a few days): the certs arrived, and I was charged only the fee for each cert supplied, and no search fee for selecting from the alternatives that I identified in the manner I set out in the post above this.

Kudos to the GRO: credit where it's due.

Aglomerado · 16-05-2011 3:49pm

I find them very quick to send the certs out too. Very efficient in my experience.

dido2 · 22-10-2011 11:51pm

I just came across this thread while trying to decide how to go about finding death records for my mother grandparents....

But I've done a few different rounds of certs already, all with different requests, usually with one or both parents names, but in one case I submitted a list of 11 possibles for an uncle of my mothers, asking that they only send the one with the correct address, none of them corresponded so they charged me €2 for each search, I had a search for a marriage cert last week along with a death cert for giving the Volume and Page numbers but in the case of the death cert I had only a rough idea of year and address and both came back and I was only charged for 2 certs...
I can't figure out if the list with 11 names along with volume and page numbers was a charge too steep or not, anyone else done it like that and got nothing back but got charged for each set of reference numbers they sent?

Applying for Birth Certificates

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