Getting Details

I despair of the UK system. From the marriage certificate of Artur Victor Davies and Gertrude Florence Jones I have narrowed their birthdays to about a 9 month period. The stupid UK system lists about 20 possible births for these 2 people, as I am not sure where they were born yet, if I assume Wrexham, where they married, then I still have 6 choices and that is only from searching the free indexes that may not be complete. I could fork out some money and pay to search the full indexes but I would still have no clear idea which person was the right one as the index only gives the name and place of birth in any 3 month period, I could easily spend over 100 uk pounds to get the right birth certificate and have a pile of others that are of no use to me.

In an effort to narrow the search I have decided to use some census data, but once again many companies expect you to pay to search with no idea if the data they supply is accurate, many companies have had the indexes transcribed by non English speakers and can contain errors.

As I was short of time this week I did a five minute Ebay search and found Trace your past. I asked for a 1901 census search for Arthur and Gertrude, within an hour I had a reply they were both listed in the 1901 and 1891 census returns, Gertrude was living with her family as her fathers name confirmed but Arthurs father was not listed Trace your past checked the 1881 census and found the father was listed with the rest of the family which confirmed the later census details. I ordered copies of all 5 census pages for less than a couple of beers and had them in my hands within a few hours. Trace your past offer a service that is both accurate and fast, I cannot praise the results enough.

I now know lots more Arthur's mother and 12 (at least) siblings, Gertrudes mother and her 7 siblings, with place of birth and approximate year of birth.