On 21 May 2006 at 23:15, ronald ferguson wrote: > Afraid you have it wrong Pat. The British records office uses 4 quarters > Jan-Mar; Apr-Jun; Jul-Sep; and Oct-Dec. The last month of each quarter is used > to identify the quarter thus the Q dates are Mar; Jun; Sep and Dec each > followed by the year. It should also be noted that these are the dates the > event was registered and *not* the date of the event and given that 6 weeks is > allowed to register the event it is quite possible that an event can be > registered in the quarter after the event happened.
There are three British record offices -- one for England and Wales, another for Scotland, and another for Northern Ireland. Births, marriages and deaths are registered at local record offices, and copies are sent to the central register offices, where they are INDEXED by quarters. In the past one had to go to the central registry and lug the heavy indexes off the shelves and get the index reference to order a copy of a birth, marriage or death certificate -- or one could pay more and the people in the office would look it up for you. Now the indexes (but not the registers themselves, except in Scotland) have been microfilmed. Volunteers are transcribing them and putting the indexes on line at http://www.freebmd.org Because the certificates are expensive, a lot of ppeople don't get them, except for direct ancestors, and for other relatives just enter the index date, which gives the date in which the event was registered, to within about 3 months, but it is the date of REGISTRATION, rather than the date of the event. A birth, or death, on 31 Dec 1870 could have been registered on 3 January 1871, and so would appear as 1 Q 1871. Marriages often took place in churches, and the vicar or rector or minister had to send the copy certificate to the local register office, where it was copied and sent to the local register office, and it was copied again and sent to the central one. When I recordf a 1st Quater date from FreeBMD in Legacy, I say "Abt Feb" -- the middle month of the quarter. I know it could be a couple of months on either side, and noting the source as FreeBMD makes it clear what the accuracy of the information is likely to be. It's a guide to further research. -- Steve Hayes E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://methodius.blogspot.com Phone: 083-342-3563 or 012-333-6727 Enter the drawing for a FREE Legacy Cruise to Alaska or a FREE research trip to Salt Lake's Family History Library. Open to users of Legacy 6 Deluxe. Enter online at http://legacyfamilytree.com/FreeTrip.asp Legacy User Group guidelines can be found at: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp To find past messages, please go to our searchable archives at: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup%40mail.millenniacorp.com/ For online technical support, please visit http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe please visit: http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/LegacyLists.asp
