RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: suttontrust on Tuesday 27 March 07 19:28 BST (UK)
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Everybody can make mistakes. But the Parkins and Champkins families seem to have been the victims of some very careless registrars. When Silvey Parkins' birth was registered in 1841 her name may well have been a mistake for Sylvia - that was her name on subsequent censuses. But worse, the registrar put her down as a boy! In 1858 she married William Champkin. William was illiterate and the registrar decided not to believe him, so the marriage certificate calls him William Champion. It's wonder we've been able to trace the family at all!
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careless registrars still existed in the 1950's
my husbands birth certificate states he was born Dec 1952, registered in Jan 1953...........
but the registrar has signed and dated it Jan 1952 :o :o, a year before he was born............
funnily enough this error has gone unnoticed for over 50 years and 1 marriage and 1 passport later........
it was only noticed recently when he need a CRB check ::) ::), and what ID did they accept the passport he got using said birth certificate !!!
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I have a marriage between Margaret Rowland and Morgan Thomas in 1839, in which the registrar (presumably only just getting the hang of things) managed to end up with Margaret Rowland marrying Margaret Thomas :o
And that's 160-odd years before civil partnerships were invented ;D
Incidentally, the error meant his present-day successor at Merthyr Register Office was not allowed to give me a copy. But as she very helpfully read out all the details of witnesses, etc, I got all the info and saved £7 :)
Gareth
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A few years ago I sent to a local registrars for a copy of a death cert. The informant was the persons daughter, under her married name of Thomas.
But no ......... that was a spelling mistake on the registrar making the copy. She should have been Lomas. Easily done, but it threw me off track for years trying to find who she had married.
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Thirty years ago I went to clerk in town where all my grandmother's children (and I) were born to try and trace the birth of the 4th? child who had died under very tragic circumstances. Clerk was very close family friend and to narrow down the possible birthdate she looked up the birth certificate for the 5th child. I'm not sure who was more shocked, her or me, to discover that on the 5th child's birth certificate was written 'stillborn, strangled on umbilical cord.' Not only was the 5th child alive and well but he had gotten a passport with this birth certificate!
P.S. 5th child is still alive and well and I was never able to find a record of 4th child.
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As a Registrar just gone in to deep depression :o Seriously mistakes were made but hopefully today we get it right!! Years ago when a lot of informants were illiterate it was much more difficult.
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Whilst I was still married, I had occasion to visit the FRC in Islington. When I'd done my research, out of curiosity, and while trying to think if there was anything else I could usefully do, I picked up the ledger and looked up my own marriage. I was astonished to find it was registered in the wrong name - one letter of my husband's surname was mistranscribed. I hoisted the ledger over and showed it to them, gave them the reference etc, and said I was Mrs B and that they had it wrong. They assured me it would be corrected but it never has. They can't be bothered! And I don't know if I care any more since I'm divorced now!
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Thirty years ago I went to clerk in town where all my grandmother's children (and I) were born to try and trace the birth of the 4th? child who had died under very tragic circumstances. Clerk was very close family friend and to narrow down the possible birthdate she looked up the birth certificate for the 5th child. I'm not sure who was more shocked, her or me, to discover that on the 5th child's birth certificate was written 'stillborn, strangled on umbilical cord.' Not only was the 5th child alive and well but he had gotten a passport with this birth certificate!
P.S. 5th child is still alive and well and I was never able to find a record of 4th child.
That sounds very odd! ??? Presumably there is no chance that this could be a mistake and should have been applied to the missing 4th child? There is no chance the 5th child had a twin that died at birth is there?
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1st child strangled on umbilical cord at birth, 2nd & 3rd healthy, 4th child died due to faulty gas cooker. Pregnant mother & other children overcome by gas- odorless at that time- ambulance crew eventually pronounced 3rd child dead and tried to save my mother and 2nd child. My grandfather arrived home to be told news. Somehow 3rd child wasn't dead and all survived except baby (4th child).
P.S. the 3rd child is my father.
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When we went to register the birth of our twins we couldn't get the buggy through the door! - so had to let my OH register the births alone.
When we met up one of the certificates wasn't signed. We presumed the certificate wasn't legal so went back to get it sorted.
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My friend who married in the mid sixties found her marriage was missing from the index's :o
She discovered it by chance after beginning her family history, when she decided to take a look.
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I bet it's in there somewhere, mistranscribed. I remember hearing of a man searching for his ancestors by the name of Gosh for decades, only to find them eventually on the census returns, all mistranscribed as Fosh. The headline was "Gosh! It's Fosh!" 8)
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No its wasn't, when she contacted the registrars it had been omitted. :o
but it there now ;D ;D
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And here's one for registrars using their initiative well.
My m-i-l was one of a big family and her father could never remember what his children should be called when he went to register the birth. On one occasion when asked what the baby's name was he said "Oh put her down as Jane" The registrar wouldn't do it and sent him home. The child was Gladys Vera Eileen!! ;D ;D
Ellen
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My father died in 1991 and when my sister and I went to register his death at the local office in Essex it was our luck to have a near blind partily, deaf registrar (she wasn't either but you can see why I have said that) as she typed in his place of birth as Plaistow when we told her that he was born in Glasgow (easy mistake, they are only some 400 odd miles apart ;D ) and she entered his surname as Tite instead of Tait. Not only did we have to correct her at the time of telling but also when she printed the certificate off as well.
old rowley
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You have to watch these civil servants like a hawk! It's not always their fault though. I was asked by a friend of mine to go with her to see the vicar the night before her wedding, as she had to go to the church and tell him all her "details" for the marriage certificate. He asked her the name and occupation of her father etc, and I listened while she told him and he wrote them out. We walked out of the church and I asked her "Did your Dad adopt you officially, then?" (I knew the details she'd just given were for her stepfather, not her birth father). She answered, "No." So I told her, explained what she'd just done, and we had to go back and tell the vicar, who had to put lines through the certificate and start all over again writing out a new one with the real father on it!
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What about careless parish clerks?
I have an entry for a burial in 1818 which gives Hannah Adams daughter of John Adams of Little Saughall, age 65. I wonder if this entry should rather read "wife of". Try as I may I cannot fit this Hannah with a father John but I can fit her in with a husband John Adams and a father Robert.
Perhaps my thinking is "up the perverbial spout" but it also occurs to me that the entry suggests Hannah was a single woman and at the age of 65 spinster rather than daughter of would be a more likely description of her in the PR if she was an unmarried woman.
Any thoughts?