Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

I've found the GRO site extremely useful for matching children to both parents, but it's a bit of a pain that you can only search male or female and +/- 2 years each side, bit restricted.

Findmypast has come along in leaps and bounds - you might need to log in to test this out but if you put in the surname you are searching for and also further down enter the Mother's Maiden Name - ignore the warning that this needs to be after 1911 - and see what results you get. You should then be able to narrow things down a bit further by location/registration district and hopefully come up with the offspring you are searching for.

Thanks for the heads up, Mary

Handy to know, though still very grateful the GRO added the maiden names, certainly saved many lots of time and money.

Bertieone wrote: ↑

13 Jul 2019 08:10

still very grateful the GRO added the maiden names, certainly saved many lots of time and money.

Absolutely, it's been a godsend and still will be because of the number of names that are spelled incorrectly, since the Findmypast search doesn't actually show the maiden name you can't just scroll down a list and see similar spellings.

MaryA wrote: ↑

13 Jul 2019 08:23

since it doesn't actually show the maiden name you can't just scroll down a list and see similar spellings.

Apologies if I have misunderstood what you mean here, but the results of GRO searches do display the mother's maiden name, and indeed you can get fuzzy matches too. I did a recent search where the MMN was Dye, and got back a list which included Dew, Day, Doe and Dewey results along with the Dyes. Sadly none matched who I was looking for. That particular branch of the family seem to have neglected to register the births of 7 of their 10 children. Fortunately they seem to have been better at getting them baptised (only 2 missing!). I do agree that the FMP facility is a useful alternative.

Yes, maybe my explanation wasn't too clear, that's where the GRO search is more useful than the Findmypast search, I've amended above to clarify.