From: "BJ & MJ Hallyburton" <hallyburton1@bigpond.com> > A big thank you to the people who took the time to offer advise and do > lookups for me in regards to my DRYDLE and STOTT families. Thanks to > June Wray, Michele, Denise V and Christine. > > In regards to the 1841 Census it has shown the family listed as > James DRYDELL aged 45 > Elizabeth aged 40 > Joseph aged 18 > John aged 16 > Susanna aged 14 > James aged 12 > Mary aged (I think) 9 > Elizabeth aged 7 > They were living at West End, Stokesley, Yorks. > > Now I need to know is it possible for me to obtain birth or baptism > certificates for any of these children? Where would I apply to for > them?> Surely you must be aware that civil registration did not begin in England and Wales until 1st July 1837? Therefore, there is no such thing as a birth certificate before that date, and since all the people in the family were obviously born before 1837, given their ages in 1841, then you cannot obtain a certificate for any of them. What you can get are copies of the appropriate entries in the parish registers for their baptisms. However, to do this you need to know where they were all born - they may not all have been born in the same place. And, as you will have discovered, the 1841 census only shows whether or not the person concerned was born in the county of residence, not actual birth places. To discover their birth places you need to look at the IGI and/or the 1851 census, which does usually give full birth places. Just because they were living at Stokesley in 1841 doesn't necessarily mean the whole family were born there. A further point to remember is that in the 1841 census the ages of everyone over 15 were supposed to be lowered to the nearest multiple of five, though I notice the ages of the two eldest children in your case were given as 18 and 16. Not all enumerators followed their instructions, but I see that the ages of the parents are given as 45 and 40, so James could have been aged up to 49 and Elizabeth up to 44. I see the IGI has the marriage of James DRYDALE [sic] and Elizabeth JACKSON at Stokesley on 21 Feb 1818. This is an official extracted record since it has an M batch no., so you should be able to obtain a record of that marriage. However, don't expect it to give you the parents of James and Elizabeth because it won't - marriage entries before 1837 hardly ever show parents of the parties. Use the IGI to try and find the children's baptisms and if they were all born at Stokesley your task should be easier. The parish registers of Stokesley are at the North Yorkshire Record Office at Northallerton. You can find the RO's e-mail address and snail mail address with Google and contact them and ask for copies of the baptismal entries. They will, of course, charge you a fee - higher if they have to do searches for the baptisms themselves. -- Roy Stockdill Guild of One-Name Studies: www.one-name.org Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE