Chalk wrote: > I have been right through the GRO Index as well as using FreeBMD. I have > tried all the spellings but for some reason they are missing. It's not just spellings. It's actual totally different surnames that can cause apparently missing children, ones that may not even be known about. It's not unknown for girls to invent a father for an illegitimate child. I have an instance where a child's mother's and stepfather's surnames were swapped over to make the child appear legitimate. > As I said I also do a lot of transcribing myself and even then a lot of > official certification is missing to back up the actual parish records. My experience is the complete opposite. Again it was known for parents to have their child baptised in a completely different parish from the one where the child was born. > I even check for male/female entries where no name was given and different > names on cert to baptism, that happens quite a lot. It definitely happens, even today. My sister nearly had two of her children registered without names because she and her husband couldn't decide on one. I've had a child appear in a census with the father's choice of name but registered with the mother's choice. It was gut instinct that made the connection otherwise the child in the census would have appeared to be unregistered and the child in the index unrelated. > One of the family was a returning officer in Wiltshire in mid 1800's and I > have found some family members even he missed! Yep, I've a couple of they: one in Buckinghamshire and one in Leicestershire. The latter put his neice's husband's occupation wrong as well; after which the father registered the children :)) The bottom line is nothing in genealogy and family history is an absolute. For every event/oddity one person finds, someone else will find the opposite. You have a huge number of missing registrations. I have virtually none. -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Ashcott, Shapwick, Greinton and Clutton, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk