General Chat

Hi, does anyone know if there is any website/place etc where free certificates are available or at least where you can view them prior to buying. I am relatively new to this family tree research and have ordered several incorrect certificates now and it's all adding up! :-S
Thank you
Gina

No Gina sorry, it would be great if you could view without buying .

Ancestry though does have some parish copies of marriage certs to 1921 for the London area . That does save buying them . Plus too baptism records that sometimes have been annotated by the vicar with the actual birth date

There is no where you can view certificates prior to purchase.

However, I believe that some old ones are available on a Lancashire site. And I know that Ancestry also has some old Marriage cert/records.

Also if you are unsure about which certificate to order you could also post on here for advice.

When ordering marriage certificates, if a couple have children then order the birth certificate of one of their children (would not suggest 1st child) and this will give mothers maiden name. Which can help when ordering a marriage certificate. The reason for not ordering 1st childs is that it can sometime happen that the 1st child is not from the marriage. Another way to check, is to use the census following the marriage, find the man (and if possible children) and then you have a wifes name. Which can help, as long as when you do find the record all the women listed have different christian names.

You will get more advice through the day. So do not give up hope.

Also are you using FreeBMD? If so, when you find a record and there is a little yellow envelope on there that means that someone has added some information to this record, so with Births, it may tell you the parents name, and with marriages who married who. Not a lot of them around but more and more people are adding these 'postems' in order to help others.
:-)

This site might help with the Coventry records, depending on the time frame
http://www.westmidlandsbmd.org.uk/

And this one for CoE parish records
http://www.hunimex.com/warwick/bmd/bmd_indx.html

They say that the transcriptions are based on films obtained from Family Search
https://familysearch.org/

Family search also has Kent PR transcriptions as does Freereg.org.uk.

Gina

If you would like someone else to take a look for you and perhaps point you in the right direction on which maybe the correct cert... why not post some details

Thank you all so much for your advice - I'm really getting into this family research now, like a little squirrel looking for nuts! My new hobby. Found out some fascinating family secrets already! And now I'm even more intrigued. Want to write up a "family history book" for my children. They don't show much interest at the moment but I am sure they will in years to come :-)

I usually look on the Mormon site it can put you on to the right road...but always check with the official certificate afterwards to make sure they are right