Civil Registration of Births came in on 1st July 1837 so for most people born after that you can order a copy of a birth certificate from the GRO. Registration was not compulsory until a while later, but a very large proportion of births were actually registered. http://www.freebmd.org.uk/Civil_Regis.html has some links to more detail. This can be done directly using reputable credit and debit cards from https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/default.asp or if you wish to pay a lot extra, via one of the commercial sites like Ancestry. See http://www.freebmd.org.uk/Certificates.html about what is on certificates. Some Americans who do not like using credit cards online or find it difficult making payments in UK currency have ordered certificates using an agency based in USA which specialises in the service, and which is intermediate in price between direct ordering from GRO and using the commercial genealogy providers. I expect someone on the list can give you details off-list of someone they recommend. Before 1837 it is more difficult. Some baptism registers show the date of birth as well as the date of baptism. There are many books and articles available about how to research Family History in the UK before 1837. Bear in mind that not all records kept by families are 100% accurate. Some were written up years after the events, and relied on fallible memory. Some people were reluctant to reveal their birth year, or occasionally their marriage year, if correlation of marriage dates and birth dates of first offspring might have proved embarrassing. Jeff ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff & Jolynn Barneck" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2013 10:12 PM Subject: [GLA] Actual birth information > The birth information that I've seen so far with regard to Welsh ancestors > includes only baptismal/christening records from the parishes. Since > older people can be listed in the baptism records, how would I know when a > person was actually born--if it's not written already in some family > journal or history record? The people I'm looking at do not appear to be > the gentry, but rather the working class. > > Thanks for your help. > > JoLynn Barneck > -- > > To send to the list send to [email protected] > GLAMORGAN Family History Mailing List archives etc. are at > http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/intl/WLS/GLAMORGAN.html > - > This site has been prepared to help you use the Glamorgan List > http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~glamorgan/ > - > A large amount of information, and a wide variety of useful links, may be > found at http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/GLA/ > > - > The South/West Wales Lookup Exchange and Gareth's Help Pages > http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~walesle/wal/AW.html and > http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ukwales2/hicks.html > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message