Thanks very much to Charani and Anne (and anyone else who has replied since this email). The information is extremeley helpful, I will be able to follow this up thanks to you. Your lateral thinking skills are much better than mine! I certainly will be keeping busy following these up. Glenys      4.  LOCKETT -  BDM and census help please- (Glenys Petry)   5. Re:  LOCKETT -  BDM and census help please- (Charani)   6. Re:  LOCKETT -  BDM and census help please- (Anne Chambers)

Glenys Petry wrote: > Thanks very much to Charani and Anne (and anyone else who has > replied since this email). > The information is extremeley helpful, I will be able to follow > this up thanks to you. > > Your lateral thinking skills are much better than mine! > > I certainly will be keeping busy following these up. YW :)) If you have births you can't find, especially by the period you're interested in, try putting in just the given name and the probably year of birth. If there are too many hits add a general location but try to avoid doing that as a child may not have been born where expected or claimed until or unless you have confirmation that the alleged place is correct. FreeBMD is excellent for that kind of search. A search like that will pick up any entries where the surname is misspelt, mangled, illegible or partially unreadable. Having twins or a child with an unusual given name is helpful too :)) Once the mother's maiden name started to be included and you are searching post 1940, Ancestry is useful for finding other children. Before then, you can use FreeBMD to find them as it will allow searches on the father's surname and the mother's maiden name. Another search method is to use an asterisk (*) before a given name in case a child was known by his/her middle name. That only works where the GRO indices actually give the middle name and not just an initial. -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Greinton and Clutton, SOM Asst OPC for Ashcott and Shapwick, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk