How can I go back two generations from 1926 birth certificate please?

[Robbie48]

Hi, my name is Robbie, and I would like to find out who my maternal great grandmother was.

My grandmother was Jane Williams (M/S Brown) who married Robert Reid Williams in Blantyre, Lanark, 1st September, 1916.   

Is there any way I can find out who my great-grandparents were without having to initally order a marriage certificate?

I would be grateful for any help you can offer.  Thank You.

[dawnsh]

Hi Robbie

Welcome to Rootschat 

I'm not as good as some of the chatters here with Scottish records but I would suggest looking for them in the census using the information from the marriage cert with regards to age and address.

Hope this helps until someone else comes along to help.

Dawn

[CaroleW]

Hi and welcome to Rootschat

How old is Jane on the marriage cert?

What is her fathers name and occupation?

Are any of the witnesses also surname Brown

 

[Josephine]

Robbie,

If your grandmother has passed away, you could check her death certificate or her obit in case they give her mother's name.

Regards,
Josephine

[Josephine]

Okay, that's weird. Did you change your original post, Robbie? It sounded as if you already had her marriage record and knew her father's name.

Jane Brown is such a common name that you might have difficulty identifying her in the census unless you also know where she was from and the names and birth order of any siblings she might have had.

It's worth it to order the actual records if you can afford it. If not, maybe someone with some extra credits on the Scottish records site would be willing to do a look-up for you.

Good luck.

Josephine

[davidft]

Doing a free search on www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk shows only one Robert Reid Williams born 1892 in Lanark.

Apparently census lookups are free on ancestry.co.uk till 28 August so you could start there and see if you can identify him.

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=658788.0

Otherwise you are going to need to buy some credits for Scotlandspeople website

EDIT: I think you are going to need to get the marriage certificate because Jane Brown is a very common name ie there are 962 born between 1890 and 1900 alone

[JMStrachan]

As your grandparents married in Scotland, their marriage certificate will have the names of their mothers and fathers, including their mothers' maiden surnames. You can download a copy at ScotlandsPeople - it's pay to view so you'd need to buy some credits, but it's a lot cheaper than ordering English certificates. There's no other way to get it for free: someone may be prepared to use a credit and look in the index, but that would simply confirm the date and location of the marriage.

You'd need 1 credit on SP to check the index, although a free search might pick it up, and then 5 credits to download the certificate. You can buy 30 credits for £7.00, which would buy you several certificates. A bargain!

[Robbie48]

Thank You all for your replies.  Much appreciated.
Robbie

[Josephine]

Robbie,

If you can't afford certificates right now, and if you know when your grandmother died, you could call or write the library in the town/city where she died and ask if they could look up her obit in the newspaper for you. Sometimes they'll do it for free or for a very low fee.

You could also contact the funeral home that took care of her funeral/burial; if you don't know which one, you could contact all of the ones in the area where she died/was buried. A lot of times they'll look up a record for free.

There's a chance those records wouldn't give her parents' names (and there's a bigger possibility of error, depending on who gave the info for the record) but it's a less expensive first step.

Josephine