1939 - what have you found?

[smudwhisk]

Claire, it could just be an indexing error by FindMyPast. They had my grandparents indexed with three closed records. Two will be my father and his brother but my uncle doesn't remember them having anyone with them so was bit of mystery.   When they had the half price offer at Christmas I decided to view it to see if there were three closed records at the address. There weren't so it looks like a pure indexing error.

[Alders]

Alders,

It ties in with this marriage
Dec 1947 
Butterfield    Phyllis   (spouse Smith)   
Smith    Walter       
Bradford    2b   159

Yes i saw this, is it normal to annotate the register with these details?

Yes, the 1939 National Register was conceived as a register which would be updated as it was used as the basis for ration books and ID cards during WWII.
If a woman married their identity (surname) would change and the register had to change to reflect that.
In addition in the early years medical care was paid for by National Insurance which in the case of a married couple would often be paid for by the husbands N.I. payments as many wives in those days stayed at home to look after the children.
When the NHS came into being in 1948 it was financed though tax rather than contributions.
Other changes were also the trigger for amendments on the register, for example if step-children changed their name this might not be picked up by the system but when they left home if they also changed their doctor they would re-register. The registration would reflect the change of name on the 1939 Register.

Cheers
Guy

Thank you Guy, this was really helpful. 

[clairec666]

My guess is that the entry for Doris has been corrected for some reason (eg a spelling mistake) with the correction straying into the line above i.e. Gilbert's entry and the transcribers have transcribed what they saw

Claire, it could just be an indexing error by FindMyPast. They had my grandparents indexed with three closed records. Two will be my father and his brother but my uncle doesn't remember them having anyone with them so was bit of mystery.   When they had the half price offer at Christmas I decided to view it to see if there were three closed records at the address. There weren't so it looks like a pure indexing error.

Yeah, I'm tempted to agree with you both. Hopefully I'll see for myself soon..... I'm not going to pay for credits when there's only one person open, and it'll be part of the subscription soon anyway.

Doris's record should be opened this year or next (she was born about 1916-7)... I'm intrigued as to what happened to her. I don't know what happened to her after she separated from my grandfather. Hopefully it'll show if she remarried.

I'm guessing as her record is still closed, that a) her death wasn't recorded on the register itself, and b) Findmypast haven't matched it to the death index.

[valg]

I have found my father recorded as married when he never married my mum until 1949..now is this an error...I have looked at original and says (m)
Or was he married previous and we never knew?
There is a woman listed above him with the same surname but some 14 yrs older and being above him would indicate she wasn't his wife as entries usually run..husband wife then children.
This woman is not know to me, she is not a cousin or aunt.
This womans surname was altered in 1962.
There is one more below him which is blocked out obviously beacause of age. Could this be a wife?
All very surreal.
Val

[StevieSteve]

Hi

This womans surname was altered in 1962.

The date might refer to something else but it would be worth trying to find a marriage (or less easily, a divorce) and getting the certificate. That would then give the original maiden name and enable lookup in the census if DOB before 1911 or for a birth cert if not

There is one more below him which is blocked out obviously beacause of age. Could this be a wife?

As the supposedly maximum possible age of someone redacted is 24, then yes, it could

[LizzieL]

I have posted before about my grandmother who always celebrated her birthday on 8th April and was surprised to find that her birthday was actually 5th April when she needed to get a copy of her birth cert when she was in her nineties.
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=730024.msg5793237#msg5793237

I have now found her on the 1939 register with a birthday on 7th April (but correct year).

She would presumably have completed the form herself since my grandfather was working away from home at the time of the register and the only other person in the household is redacted (probably my father's youngest sibling who would be 14 at the time).

[pharmaT]

The majority of my family were in Scotland in 1939 so I am limited in the useful searches I can do on the 1939.  I did find however that my MIL's Dad and older siblings were living literally just around the corner from where my MIL lives now.  She hadn't known this because by the time she was born he had moved to another area of the city.

[clairec666]

I have found my father recorded as married when he never married my mum until 1949..now is this an error...I have looked at original and says (m)
Or was he married previous and we never knew?
There is a woman listed above him with the same surname but some 14 yrs older and being above him would indicate she wasn't his wife as entries usually run..husband wife then children.
This woman is not know to me, she is not a cousin or aunt.
This womans surname was altered in 1962.
There is one more below him which is blocked out obviously beacause of age. Could this be a wife?
All very surreal.
Val

Similar thing in my family - my grandfather had an earlier marriage that was never talked about. They are living together in 1939

The lady listed with your father could be his wife, despite the age difference, and although the ordering of the records seems a little out of the ordinary, there's no reason why a wife shouldn't be listed before her husband. Or the closed record could be a wife, she could have been in her early twenties. Or the marital condition for your father could be an error.... mistakes could have been made when the register was written out. Lots of possibilities to research!

[dawnsh]

I've been doing my trees for many years now and have always come to terms with the fact my 2xgreat grandmother was born in 1849 and her birth doesn't appear in the GRO index. I have her baptism but no birth date is recorded.

I have found her in the 1939 just after she celebrated her 90th birthday and at last I have her date of birth! She died in 1941 aged 91