Ordered certificates from the British General Records Office [View all]

And I'm kind of disappointed.

The first certificate I received was from Lincolnshire for death of the brother of my gr-gr-gr-grandmother. While I knew their father's name, I don't have their mother's name, not even her first name. I was hoping that the death certificate would have some information. Nothing, not even the relationship of the person providing the little information on the death certificate. All I got was the exact date of death rather than the quarter of the year in which he died.

Then I got the birth certificate for my great grandfather from Wales. The birth date I had in my records was actually the date his birth was registered and not his birthday! While it verified his parents' names it didn't add a lot but I didn't expect much more.

I also got his parents' wedding certificate and the wedding certificate for his father when he remarried after my great grandmother died. The new information I got was the actual wedding date, which we didn't previously have, the church where they married (the only church in the tiny village where they lived), and both fathers' names. No mothers' names, which is disappointing. Their wedding certificate does not even have their birth dates or ages, which would have been nice - they are just listed as "of age"!

The wedding certificate for my great grandfather's second wedding does list his age and since his father's name is the same and he's listed as a widower, it verifies that it is the same man. I was not sure - nothing in our family history had him remarrying, so it's nice to be sure.

Now to see if I can leverage these little tidbits into going back another generation. Looking for Mary Morgan in Wales is harder than sorting out John Smiths in this country - knowing that her father was named David might possibly help.

The big problem is that that next generation puts me back before Great Britain kept official records. I guess I need to find out how to get the parish records from that church in that little village....

At roughly 10 Euros per certificate, I wish I had gotten more for my money but at least not all the certificates were a total waste of money.