On 07/08/2011 22:44, Bob Hobden wrote:
"Martin Brown" wrote

Bob Hobden wrote:

If you are doing your Family Tree I hope you have better luck at a
Records Office than I ever have, never anything at all and some of the
staff are certainly not helpful like the ones on the TV. Good luck.

Apart from the dragons that infest the Durham County records office I
have found most of the other County records office and local history
staff reasonably helpful. You cannot expect them to have the right
book open at the right page for you when you arrive as usually happens
on TV.

If you have done your homework then the Records office is one place to
find the microfilms of the actual marriage and birth certificates. It
speeds things up enormously if you already have a prepared list of
what you are looking for gleaned from IGI or FreeBMD.

Tricky bit is playing guess the parish church in larger towns.


Why waste time and money going to a Records Office to look at a
microfilm of a Cert when you can order an official copy online for £9
once you have the Volume and Ref No. There is also no need to know the

That only works after 1837 - they are the easy ones. I am back to before
1800's on most lines and down to early-1700's on some.

It gets expensive at even £7 a throw when you have something common like
eg Sarah Brown in Liverpool to find. Lancs BMD is very useful at giving
full church references so microfilm is fairly easy to use.

It is worth paying careful attention to what records are held where. I
was once caught out visiting Preston (Lancs CRO) only to find that the
material I wanted to see was only available in Manchester.

Church involved. Certainly cheaper than travelling the Country as I've
done in the past and to no avail.
It's once you are back past 1837 (probably nearer 1800 in reality) it
gets more difficult and Records Offices become more useful (if you guess
correctly and have some luck).

Use IGI or county specific resources for searching and then going to
look up the primary records works pretty well for me (with IGI allow for
the occasional USian MM/DD vs DD/MM date twiddle error too).

Regards,
Martin Brown