Pat, You were asking about the death of an ancestor named Mary HARTNELL, saying that you 'found a burial for a Mary Hartnell, age 36, at Staple Fitzpaine on 16th April 1840. When I checked Free BMD to get the details of the death, so that I can get the certificate, the death isn't listed.' You also said that 'I know that for various reasons Births and Marriages are not always registered but Deaths always are because there is a body to be got rid off and officialdom gets involved, and officials always keep records.' In fact the registration of deaths were not made the responsibility of the family concerned until 1874, so there are some cases of the Registrar not being able to track down every single death in every quarter, regardless of whether a burial took place or not. The GRO indexes are also not infallible, so contacting Taunton R.O. would in many instances be the right move. However in your particular case it may be the burial transcription that proves to be at fault. Although you didn't mention what your source was, FreeREG certainly does show Mary HARTNELL's burial as being on 16th April 1840. If as an alternative source of verification you try looking at the burials on Family Search 'England Deaths & Burials 1538-1991' (a data set that was in fact recently updated) you will note that it shows Mary's burial date as being exactly 1 year later (16th April 1841). This means that the FreeBMD death shown as Mary HARTNALL in June qtr 1841 Taunton 10 305 is quite likely to be worth investigating. Duncan, Dundee