Searching the new GRO indexes - share your tips!

[Jon_ni]

Bumble you've got the wrong end of the stick. People are just saying it would make life easier if the GRO search page & the gender option was modified in the future to enable results from Both males & females to be displayed. It is on trial and they have asked for feedback on experiences of using the index and ordering certs.

Most of the time can tell gender from the 1st names but for your ancestor (if you did not have prior knowledge) and for eg Francis/Frances Lesley etc it would be useful to retain the ability to specify Male or Female rather than a default Both. Otherwise an additional M/F column on the screen results would be required.

John

[cristeen]

A couple of things I've noticed this morning:

2) Don't believe the 1911 census! I've found a child of my great-great-grandparents who died young, yet there are no "dead children" according to the 1911 census... had they forgotten her? I've purchased the PDF to prove she belonged to them. Now I'm wondering, how many more forgotten children will I find?

clairec666, I have the opposite problem, 1911 list my couple with ten born and seven deaths, I can only find one of those seven! I have searched five years prior to the marriage date to 30 years after it in all the areas they lived, maybe the other six were never registered!

[Andrew Tarr]

I wish we didn't have to choose a gender, I can't see the reason for that.

I can only assume it is due to the display limitation of 250 names eg if searching for John Smith. On my feedback for the cert order suggested they gave a Both option, most of the time I would use that.

I don't buy that, as there will always be a way occasionally to exceed 250 as it is now.  I would find it very useful to find a whole family with a fairly rare surname, by asking for both genders, a MMN, and a span of ±5 years.  The system can always reply 'over 250 records' and ask for a smaller trawl.

[Guy Etchells]

When filling in First Forename and Second Forename options if you do not get the expected result try swapping the names over.
I.E. use the Second Forename as the First Forename and vice versa.

Cheers
Guy

[BumbleB]

Bumble you've got the wrong end of the stick. People are just saying it would make life easier if the GRO search page & the gender option was modified in the future to enable results from Both males & females to be displayed. It is on trial and they have asked for feedback on experiences of using the index and ordering certs.

Most of the time can tell gender from the 1st names but for your ancestor (if you did not have prior knowledge) and for eg Francis/Frances Lesley etc it would be useful to retain the ability to specify Male or Female rather than a default Both. Otherwise an additional M/F column on the screen results would be required.

John

If you say so !!!!

[Nick_Ips]

I don't think anyone is asking for any useful features to be taken away BumbleB, it is just about removing some of the existing search limitations to make the system more user friendly and convenient.

It depends what kind of searches you are doing and why. If you know you are looking for a male relative, then selecting 'male' may be useful - but it could also cause you a problem if the gender has been incorrectly recorded or transcribed, quite possible in the example you gave.

However, if you are trying to find all the children of a particular couple during the whole of their marriage, the male/female and the year range limitations together mean it is hard work with repeated searches changing the criteria slightly each time.

My suspicion is the limitations are deliberate to manage demand on the GRO system. I'm not an expert on how such things work, but it seems obvious that making the user select male/female means the number of records to be searched could be immediately halved. Hopefully it is a restriction that won't last long 

[cuffie81]

For those of you that are using my script, I've published an update which adds various access/quick keys for even quicker searching and toggling of search options. See notes on the greasyfork page for details.

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/24590-gro-index-search-helper

PS: If you need to disable the script for any reason you can do so in either the Firefox 'add-ons' page (Greasemonkey) or in the Tampermonkey UI.

[mentmore]

I have read a lot about the records available to view from the GRO.
Can you please tell me the web site and also will I be able to see more than say on Ancestry or other sites.
Many thanks

[mirl]

Not sure if this is the right spot, but I just found a grand uncle I didn't know about and the REALLY interesting thing is that he seems to have died before he was born!!!!

Alfred Henry Neighbour
Birth - Mar 1894 Vol 1b p401
Death - Dec 1893 Vol 1b p311