In a message dated 10/11/2009 00:19:16 GMT Standard Time, brucemoorhouse@sympatico.ca writes: His birth record only names the mother, and the place is Bamburgh Northumberland. Bruce: I assume that by "his birth record" you mean his Birth Certificate. That would have been issued by the local registrar and would indicate the name of the Registration District and the Registration Sub-District where the birth took place. Bamburgh was a Sub-District of Belford Registration District, so if that is all you are going on, he could have been born anywhere in that sub-district, which you could think of as Bamburgh Village plus several other villages, etc, within, say, three or four miles of Bamburgh. However, the "place of birth" as given under the date in the first column of the certificate should be more specific than that, so if all that says is also just "Bamburgh", then it means "somewhere in Bamburgh Village". That would include any circus encampment in a nearby field, or perhaps in the Dunes, as well as all the houses in the village. If you know anything at all about Bamburgh then you will know that it is dominated by its magnificent castle. A lot of what is so impressive today was actually built towards the end of the 19th century by Lord Armstrong, who bought the castle from its previous owners, the Crewe Trustees. The Crewe Trustees were a long standing charitable organisation which was coming to the end of its period of usefulness in the 1870s, though they could still have been carrying on some of their good works, based on the castle. Among them were a school, a (free) pharmacy, a "coastal safety" organisation (they ran the lighthouses on the Farne Islands and Grace Darling's father worked for them). They would almost certainly have had some sort of maternity service of which travellers and local people could avail themselves. I suggest you contract Northumberland County Record Office, at Woodhorn Colliery, Northumberland, where they have the voluminous Crewe Trustees MSS. There is a possibility that somewhere among them there is a record of the birth. They also have the originals of Bamburgh parish registers which you should check in case there was a baptism there. You would have to pay for their research service but their charges are reasonable - much cheaper than an air-fare from Canada! Geoff Nicholson