Genealogy Chat

Hi Im trying to trace my family history for my sons, and my mums side of the family is very scarce. What i know is that my grandad was born 28th october 1901 and my nan was born 13th May 1916. We have no idea who my grandads parents were and all we know about my nan is that she was sent away to live with an aunt in Kent as soon as she was born. Her mum was a servant in a house in London and we believe was unmarried when she fell pregnant. I have found a Ruth Osbourne born 1886circa who was a servant in the 1901 census but i dont actually know if this is her. My grandads name was Ernest Elliott My nans name was Ethel Violet Osbourne Nans mum was Ruth Osbourne (we believe this is her maiden name as we dont think she was married) Where do i look and how do i get the information i need for free preferably?

Have you got any birth certificates at all? They may have some info on them. Sue

Nope we have nothing, just dates of birth and that they were both born in london

start with your parents marriage certificate, it will give full names of each parents and an address at the time of marriage, then ask for a look up on the boards for the neares census year and see if anyone else from the same family crop up in that household, when you have found the correct people, then see if you can find a marriage between your grandparents, you will then have a year, place and date of marriage, and an age when they both married, this will then give the names of both your grandparents parents, keep repeating, looking for both censuses, marriage look ups etc, takes a while but the good people on the boards here are a huge help to me

Have a look at the Essential Web Sites thread Robyne, I have just nudged it up the board for someone. Ann

Why not have a look at my Tips for Newbies thread.

You need to get the following certificates. For Ernest, March quarter 1902 Hackney 1b 403 For Ethel, June quarter 1916 Willesden 3a 497 There will be some useful info on the certs. Sue

For Ernest there are three birth registrations in Q4 of 1901 as well as the Q1 1902 entry mentioned above. Sarah

Hi all, where are you looking to get that information? is it a certain website?

www.census.pro.gov.uk - for the 1901 Census; www.familysearch.org - for the 1881 census and IGI; http://freebmd.rootsweb(.)com - remove the brackets - for free births, marriages and deaths indexes. http://www.familysearch.org/ You can then send off for the Certificates with the index information

Use FreeBMD and 1837online(.)com for certificate references, the former free and incomplete, the latter being pay-per-view but complete. Certificates will cost £7 and you cannot see them or the information contained unless you shell out for them.