National Registers
Other UK registers
Your Ancestry may not originate in England or Wales; it could be Scottish or Irish. In which case you may wish to pay a visit to the registries of these nations either to start or continue your Genealogy search. Here is brief guide to accessing and using the information their archives hold.
Scotland
If you have Scottish antecedents, you will have an advantage over your English and Welsh counterparts because, although civil registration did not start until 1855, it was kept far more thoroughly. All certificates feature more Genealogy information, too. Birth certificates, for example, contain not only all the details shown on English ones, but also the date and place of the parent’s marriage. This marvellous addition saves masses of time, allowing you to go straight to the marriage index and find the correct union without any need to rifle through the files. It gets better: Scottish marriage certificates carry the names of both the bride’s and the groom’s parents, rather than just names of the father’s. Death certificates also feature the mother and father’s names – unlike English and Welsh certificates, which show neither. This all saves the family historian a lot of time.
In 1855 the certificates were even more detailed: birth certificates showed the ages and birthplaces of the parents and the number of siblings, living and deceased; marriage certificates gave details of any previous marriages; and death certificates offered place of birth, details of marriages and all living and deceased brothers and sisters. Sadly, this bureaucratic largesse lasted only a year because of the amount of work involved in maintaining it.
The General Register Office at New Register House, Edinburgh, holds all the records. Unlike at the FRC, a fee is required to search. You will be required to pay £17 for a day and £10 for an afternoon. But it is worth it. All the indexes are on computer, which at the very least prevents genealogists elbow – consequence of hulking great files around the FRC. You can also get a lot more done in one day. If you have the correct reference, you will be able to inspect the original records on microfilm or microfiche, and write down the details or photocopy them (you can also order copy certificates by post). This allows you to conduct several searches in one day and get quite far back into your Family History.
A couple of points to bear in mind. First, it is advisable to call ahead and book a seat and terminal if you have to travel any distance; second, you are only allowed to use pencils, so make sure you stock up beforehand.
If you are unwilling or unable to travel to Edinburgh, fear not: there is a searchable index at the General Register Office website. Bear in mind that, out of respect for the living, only birth and death certificates more than 100 years old – 75 years for marriage certificates are available for browsing. You also have to pay £6 to access the records.
Ireland & Northern Ireland
General registration began in Ireland in 1864. At the General Register Office in Dublin there are no consolidated indexes; the records for each county are filed separately. The certificates offer virtually the same information as their English and Welsh counterparts, apart from death certificates, which offer only the person’s name and age, and the date and place of their death.
As elsewhere, original records are not open for inspection. Instead, you will have to find the correct reference, then request, for a small sum (just under 2 euros), a photocopy of the original entry to check it is the one you want before ordering a certificate. As in Scotland, this system allows family historians to go back through several generations simply by noting the details on the photocopy and continuing from there.
Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, all records pertaining to Northern Ireland are held at the General Register Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast. The office offers a distinctive system to Genealogy researchers: users can conduct either an assisted or an index search. The former, which costs £21, involves the assistance of a member of staff. An index search is, as the name indicates, a solo search through the indexes and costs £9. When you have the reference you require you can ask a staff member to check it for you – they will read out the info and can note it down. It is worth booking ahead for both methods.
For those with relatives from the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands, both boast registries that are open to the public for Genealogy research. The Isle of Man records, held in Douglas, date back to 1878. For the Channel Islands, civil registration commenced in 1840 in Guernsey, and two years later in Jersey.