CORNWALL FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY
5 Victoria Square, Truro, Cornwall, TR1 2RS  UK      
Telephone  01872 264044   overseas +44 1872 264044

Beginner Guide

Start with yourself, add your family, your parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc., in fact any relatives you can remember. Question older relatives who can be invaluable in providing knowledge of ancestors you may not know of or have forgotten. Put all this information into chronological order and you will be surprised what a good start you have made. Research back from this information, and if within the last one hundred years or so, you will need to refer to the General Records Office (GRO) Indexes, formerly known as the St Catherine's Index, after the house where the Indexes were kept.

Since 1st July 1837 records of births, deaths and marriages throughout England and Wales have been kept by the Registrar-General, although registration in the early years was not complete.  Indexes are published in respect of each quarter ending March, June, September and December for all the Births, Deaths and Marriages which have taken place in England and Wales during that quarter. Each of the Indexes is in alphabetical order for the quarter and collectively form the GRO Births Marriages and Deaths (BMD) Indexes. These indexes are available at various centres as well as at the Family Records Centre, Myddleton Street, London. The full GRO index, up to 1999, is held on fiche at our Cornwall Family History Society Library and, on film, at the Cornwall Studies Library (CSL), Alma Place, Redruth, up to 1939.
If you cannot reach Truro, try FREEBMD their information is not yet complete, but improves almost daily.

By searching the Index you should be able to find whatever relative you are looking for in a particular quarter, together with the registration area in which the event took place. Even if you are not entirely sure when a birth, death or marriage took place, it doesn't take long to look through several years. Most people were in their mid-20s when they married, few marrying before 18-20, so if you have a marriage but no ages, it is worth assuming that the birth of the bride/groom took place at least 18 years earlier and search back from there. You may be lucky and find the birth quickly but if it was a late marriage you will have to go back several years. If you have a birth and are looking for the marriage of the parents, it is as well to search back from the date of the birth, since many marriages took place only a short time before the birth of the first child. With family history it is largely a question of keeping on searching but you will gain a great sense of achievement when you finally find that relative you have spent so much time looking for.

As the GRO index will only give you the year, quarter and registration district, you may require further details by obtaining a certificate. There are three main methods:-

1.  From the local Superintendent Registrar of the area concerned. Registration district area and addresses can be found on the GENUKI website. The local registrars do not use the GRO index references, they will need to know the approximate date and, if possible, the parish in which the event was registered. 

2.  There is a new online service for certificates.  Now open to all and costs only £7

Also see Church Records