Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History Census 1911

Oh you are so right, on my paternal grandmother's side, I've gone back as far as my 20th great grandfather. One link leads onto another. I've uncovered quite a few skeletons over the years too!!!

Have you tried http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/ the searches are free. Or there's the FreeBMD website. I found alot of mine through those. They have been a god send to me over the last couple of years.

I haven't Maisie, thanks for the tip, all very welcome.

I found them all very useful over the last few years, if you google CheshireBMD or LancashireBMD. They are the most local to us. But with the UKBMD you can search other regions of the country!!!
Happy Hunting!!!

For wirral parish register details have you tried this site:

http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~cprdb/

Some of the details go back to 17th century. No good for 20th century though.

I'm always very grateful for a heads up, but dear lord, what were they all smoking when they put that site together.

If you use the free sites like Cheshire BDM don't get too down hearted if you can't find the results that you're after.

They're often very good for the mid to late Victorian period but don't have much on them earlier than 1840 or later than 1930. Basically, not all the years are covered, so just because you can't find something on these sites doesn't mean that a record of it doesn't exist somewhere else.

I agree that it's not very user friendly but there's still a load of useful info there if you persevere. The most annoying thing is that it only searches for the exact name you put in and doesn't pick up variants like ancestry or findmypast do. I had problems finding people on my Upton side of the family but then found them by searching for Uption, Upshon and Upshone!

Yep! I'm with you on that one. A bit of lateral thinking goes a long, long way.

Yes, geekus. I think it also gives us an insight into how our ancestors pronounced their names in the local dialect. Bearing in mind that most people were illiterate until mid 19th century (at least, mine were!) it was down to the parish clerks and census takers to record what they heard. I had trouble finding a great grandfather Duncan in the early censuses but eventually found him recorded as Dunkin and Dunking. Presumably that's how he pronounced it.

...exactly! People often wrote things phonetically. Plus the fact that some of those parish clerks had handwriting like doctors!! Not all of them (some of the records are quite beautiful) but it only takes one bad transcript to throw your research.

Also annoys me when they abbreviate peoples christian names in official records and your not sure what they mean.

I agree with the above, the Cheshire parish site i had a go on and found a possible whos occupation was described as XREVD XMR, Bletchley Park springs to mind.

Have you tried the Electoral Rolls? And if he served in either of the World Wars, there's Army Records, and also something very useful called the "Absent Voters List", which can also give some valuable information such as a soldier's army number and home address.

Hopefully I'm not telling you what you've already tried. Let me know if it helps!

Surely that's ex Reverend and Ex er.... Minister? Defrocked for being naughty, or is that just my family? Well don't think Bletchley was going then anyway.

Found this in the site's guidance notes:

Occupation/rank code (in Occupation cell):
X before name = a title (e.g. XSir, XMrs, XCaptain)
N.B. X widow = when ‘widow’ is a title (e.g. ‘Widow Smith’), not a relationship

Looks like bert's ancestor was known as Reverend Mister...(??) which makes some sort of sense.