RootsChat.Com
England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Northumberland => Topic started by: MaryThorn on Wednesday 08 August 18 21:04 BST (UK)
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I'm wondering where the best place is to find birth, marriages and deaths for Belford and the surrounding area.
I'm relooking at my Ray family from the Belford/Bamburgh/Detchant/Warenford area and not managing to find many family records.
Freereg only has a total of 6 records for Belford with the the Ray family, all burials.
I'm drawing a blank on the GRO index too, but I am coming up with Berwick (is this a possibility) for Belford.
Also not many Ray's to be found on Findmypast too.
This Ray family is a long standing mystery, I'd be grateful for any pointers on where to source records.
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Belford was a registration district in its own right from 1837 to 1937
https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/belford.html
You didn't say what time period you are looking for, that would help others to give you more info about where to look.
Boo
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Sorry, meant to include this link too
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/NBL/Belford
Boo
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Sorry, I meant to post that I was trying to find records from late 1700s to late 1800s when my family moved further South in Northumberland.
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Also census records state family members as being born in Bamburgh. Im taking it that Bamburgh came under Belford too.
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Also census records state family members as being born in Bamburgh. Im taking it that Bamburgh came under Belford too.
Yep - as per the link I just posted. If you look down the list you will see which parishes were included
Boo
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Have you tried Family Search?
Spelling variations may help and FS is fairly good at that. Rea, Reay, Rae etc may be how they are entered in any register.
If you can give a couple of specifics we can look.
Boo
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Thanks for that Boo
I'm not having much luck with Family search these days. I can never get it to load on my IPad. I don't know if my IPad is too old to support it since its updated.
I've been trying for a couple of years to find out more about my 2 X Great Grandmother, Eleanor Ray born approx 1840/41.
I've never been able to pinpoint her birth through the GRO index, not found her in the Belford area at birth but a couple of possibilities of births in Berwick.
I haven't been able to work out her parents either. At the 1841 census she is living with her Grandfather Thomas and uncles and ? Aunt/mother Ann. In 1851 she remains living with the wider family in Detchant. By the 1861 census she is listed as living with her uncle Thomas Ray, Ann Ray, sister of Thomas is also living there. Eleanor's entry initially states daughter and then it is crossed out and neice is written. This has always lead my to assume that Ann is her mother and perhaps her birth can't be found because she was illegitimate.
She married my 2 X Great Grandfather Robert in 1861 in Belford. I haven't yet ordered their marriage certificate which I presume could indicate a fathers name. However if she was illegitimate then it would give me nothing,
I've hoped that by looking at the wider Ray family I could draw some more firm conclusions, however with a lack of family members to find I've not been able to explore my research on the Rays.
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What was her married surname?
Boo
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Mary, I seem to remember from an earlier thread that you live pretty close to Woodhorn?
Have you investigated the availability of records there?
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Boo
So sorry, I thought I'd put my 2 x Great Grandfather down, his surname was Straughan.
Jen you're right I'm about 30 minutes from Woodhorn, I'm registered to use the archives but as yet have never managed to go and explore what is available. I work full time and juggle taxi-ing teenage kids to various activities so have never yet had the time to get up there.
I actually drove past yesterday on a day out with my 13 year old, I was quite tempted to go in but she reminded of the time previously on a day out when I'd got her hunting through Pegswood Cemetry for family gravestones 😂 So I didn't think it would go down to well if I took her to the archives. All my research is limited to online.
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Alnwick Mercury 01 August 1861
At Belford St Columba's Church on the 13th ult,by the Rev. David Terras, Mr Robert Straughan, Detchant Buildings, to Miss Ellen Ray, Detchant
So, now you know the church and date, check Woodhorn catalogue to make sure they have this register on microfilm and next time you pass you can stop and see what it says about her father. Shouldn't take too long and its way cheaper than a marriage cert.
Boo
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I'm not having much luck with Family search these days. I can never get it to load on my IPad. I don't know if my IPad is too old to support it since its updated.
Are you aware that there is now a requirement to register with the Family Search site and be signed in to be able to search and see results?
Its simple , all they require is a name and an email address.
That 'may' be the problem?
Boo
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I'm already registered with Familysearch. I've used it for years but since they updated the site recently I can't get anywhere on it, it just keeps coming up as error. I suspect the problem lies with my IPad.
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Wow, Boo thanks for the marriage details. I hadn't found that with my newspaper subscription.
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You said you have an FindMyPast sub.
I put in Robert Straughan in the name boxes, specified the county as Northumberland, and the date as 1861.
I only got 4 results. The last of those, though its billed as Births, has subtext in the result (even if I am not signed in and therefore doing a free search) and gives the full text of the marriage announcement.
As the newspaper database is done by OCR rather than transcription, its really worth reading each result in full.
Boo
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What is OCR?
Just had another look at the newspaper results through Findmypast subscription and it came up with 89 results for Robert Straughan but none relating to his marriage,
I've always struggled with searching newspaper reports through Findmypast.
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What is OCR?
Optical Character Recognition - read by a machine rather than a human, the more fuzzy the original text, the harder it is for the machine to make out the characters, which is why you often see gobbledegook in the results, though if you look at the image its readable by we humans.
Just had another look at the newspaper results through Findmypast subscription and it came up with 89 results for Robert Straughan but none relating to his marriage,
Did you filter by county and then by year? if you are looking for something in Northumberland and don't filter by County you get every instance of that name from every paper in the database - which sometimes is worth resorting to as a slow news day elsewhere may show that other papers picked up stories as fillers.
Boo
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Yay, that worked Boo, found the newspaper article. Thanks!
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Good! Pleased I could help, not just to find the announcement but hopefully using filters will make future searches easier for you too.
Boo
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Wow, Boo thanks for the marriage details. I hadn't found that with my newspaper subscription.
You were given the marriage details from the newspaper by Boo on Christmas Day 2016 :-\
This may help (though not by tomorrow) to ascertain what her father's name was recorded as when she married. At least it shows which church.
Alnwick Mercury 1st August 1861
At Belford, at St Columba’s Church on 13th ult., by the Rev. David Terras, Mr Robert Straughan, Detchant Buildings, to Miss Ellen Ray, Detchant.
Full thread here http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=761667.msg6129813#msg6129813
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Ah Boo, I'm so sorry. I hadn't realised you'd given me that before. That's the problem with not having a lot of time to get stuck into my research and collating information of line, it means I lose some of the content found.
Thank you though as your help with the newspaper research will undoubtedly help me in the future.
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According to this thread from 2013 concerning the same family :
"Eleanor (or Ellen), the granddaughter in the 1841 and 1851 census, was Ann's illegitimate daughter - her baptism on 25 April 1841 is in the Lucker parish register."
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=627383.0
Would need to be checked but Lucker baptisms only go up to 1837 on familysearch unfortunately.
Alan.
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Actually, it is on familysearch. Batch number P004211.
Ellen Ray. Baptized 25 April 1841. Lucker, Northumberland. Mother Ann Ray.
Actual parish record might give more info, place of abode maybe.
Alan.
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Alan, that's brilliant. I've managed to go back through through the other Rootschatters posts and glean a lot more information to look into from them.
It answers a lot of questions and why I've struggled to get anywhere with this family.