Biggest Stroke of Luck

[Simma]

Just before going to bed tonight I thought I'd do a bit of searching for my gr gr gr grandmother's death on the BMD Registers at Ancestry. I had narrowed it down to the 30 year period after 1901 and resigned myself to endless trawling before I came across it.

Lo and behold, I do the search and click on the first register page at random - Oct/Nov/Dec 1920 - only for her to be on that very first page.

Anybody else had similar strokes of luck?

[Ecneps]

Yes, it has happened to me I'm glad to say, a very similar thing, but make the most of it, I don't think it happens too often   

[gazania]

I had been searching in the Camberwell area for many years for the wife and daughter of my Fox convict.  Convict records gave no names of the family left behind in the UK  Then along came the Internet and I found that two possible surnames were worth following up - Fox and Voller (being a second possible marriage by the wife).  I did a trawl through FreeBMD when it first came online.  Lo and behold I found the birth of a Mary Fox Voller who was born just after her mother had placed her son (my ancestor), James Benjamin Fox, aged 11, on board a boat to join his convict father in Moreton Bay in 1846.

Shivers ran up & down the spine as I felt that my ggggrandmother was recording her grief and trying to leave message for some one to find.  Obtaining this birth certificate broke down all the brick walls and led me to making happy contact with several relatives in London who like me had no family knowledge of the convict connection. Gazania

[stonechat]

For me luck is someone else spots my website, and tells me the female surname in a marriage- a major breaktthrough with raising a sweat!

Bob

[Comosus]

I couldn't find someone in Leeds and decided I would search through all the districts.  Guess who was on the first page of the one I clicked on?

I also have the second marriage of my GGGG Grandfather which was the very first marriage at Guiseley after Civil Registration.  My GGGG grandfather's birth isn't on the IGI but because it had his father's name, I found a family whose last child on the IGI is 2 or 3 years before when my GGGG Grandfather would have been born and it's the right place too.  I wouldn't have been able to go back to that generation without the certificate.  It's a good job they didn't marry a couple of days earlier.

Andrew