** POSTEMS on FreeBMD **

[macwil]

Do you know if it is possible to search for surname and registration district together? If it is possible please explain how to do it.
I've tried but get 'no results with that criteria' and yet I've seen results from individual searches that contain both. With a name like Wilson there are numerous results from all over the country and I'm really only interested in Wigan and nearby.

I think if you put the surname in "Information contains" and the District in "Record contains", you should get the results you are looking for.

Thanks, it did cut the number of postems returned on the individual searches. There were just two returns from a search of all BMD.
However it does rely on the informant mentioning the name in the postem and not all postems repeat the info already in the record.
Still one can't always get what one wants.

[knittree]

sounds great everyone doing this but some people are not as careful about facts.

I recently added details from a great aunt's sons's birth cert into a postem.   The boy was with Mum but was adopted at a few months old.   The boy was born 1943 or 1944 his mother is now dead .  So if an adoptee looks her up he will know his mother is dead but also if he looks his original name up on ancestry he will find her and her family.

I also had a book about survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade. I added that fact to deaths mentioned in the book including a chap born in Australia who somehow got in the fighting and died in England.  I love to think of someone seeking a death and clicking on an envelope to find out their relative survived the charge - the ones from 13th Light Dragoons of course.

Be handy to folks too if anyone defintely knew a relative emigrated since WW2 as anyone alive in 1939 but whose name is blacked out on the 1939 index and not living in the England and Wales when they die won't ever be uncovered on the 1939 index.   So emigration could be mentioned in a postem.

my father died in 2010 and is still covered up on the 1939 yet mum who died before Dad has been uncovered.

A thought !   if a person in England and Wales in 1939 index moved to Scotland later and died there, is the information that they died passed on automatically so their name is uncovered.

[knittree]

You can if course click on the FreeBMD site to correct errors made in the freebmd index

For instance the bride in a marriage on my tree was entered as married in Stockport but husband was entered as married in Stockton on Tees.   

If a marriage place is wrong or a wrong reference was typed then when Freebmd added all the brides to the grooms they didn't match and you find perhaps 6 men and 5 women listed and the missing woman is with other people whose correct references match her incorrect one.

FreeBmd will alter errors made by transcribers in their index but as their purpose is to index the national indexes as they stand they cannot alter mistakes made back in the 1867 pages for instance.

I find quite a few errors made by the government clerks preparing the national indexes.  Spelling mistakes in surnames though the name on the actual certificate is correct for instance.

Notes about these I include in a postem.

My great grandfather had the name Peter put down as his father's name on his marriage certificate but I could only find a woman with his mother's name marrying a James.  His Birth certiflcate said father was James.

Dna via Ancestry has proved the name James was right.   I have two new 4th cousins who are 2nd cousins removed to each other.

James' father was Hector, a subcontractor, who born in Scotland but travelled from site to site, his wife was from Worcestershire as was first child but then eight more born in England, Scotland or Wales in 7 different counties and the dna matches.     

Luckily one daughter was born in Stockport and all mother's maiden names of births 1837 to date are shown for births in Stockport Reg. DIstrict bearing  in mind registration boundary changes.  Thus I got Hector's wife's maiden name from CheshireBMD.

Poynton (next to Stockport) registers in Macclesfield also in CheshireBMD but is a district which did not allow mother's maiden names to be shown.

The money for the dna (less than the cost of 8 certificates) has found a few blood ancestors.  Worth the cash, definitely.

[LizzieL]

You can if course click on the FreeBMD site to correct errors made in the freebmd index

You can request a correction if the transcriber has made an error, but you cannot have an incorrect postem removed.
I found a postem attached to a birth which gave an incorrect suggestion for parentage. All I could do was put on an additional postem with the correct information. The original postem with incorrect information still stays at the top of the list.

[dawnsh]

A thought !   if a person in England and Wales in 1939 index moved to Scotland later and died there, is the information that they died passed on automatically so their name is uncovered.

Maybe not.

As far as I know, FindMyPast do routinely unlock records from the 1939 where they have discovered a match in the post 2007 indexes.

Now, how they do this is open to speculation.

They may have a researcher at one of the 7 England & Wales host sites who is manually going through the death index and noting down dates of birth, but this will only potentially work for male deaths whose surnames have not changed.

Women born pre-1939 will, on the whole, have different surnames on their deaths.

Alternatively they are working with a company (or the GRO itself but unlikely) who does have electronic access to the death data after 2007.

They may not be many and they do pay a huge sum in fees (£57,00 annually) for this data but have to jump through hoops to get at it.

These companies have to prove that they need access to prevent fraud.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/disclosure-of-death-registration-information-how-to-apply/disclosure-of-death-registration-information

[Leyther]

eadaoin
I've only recently joined RootsChat so am still bumbling about randomly.
As I have a large number of certs from the GRO (only one incorrect) I will certainly make the effort to enter details on FreeBMD, thanks to your original post.

[Alandal]

The earlier post from Clairec666 on how to search Postems (http://www2.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/ShowPostems.pl) no longer appears to work.  Does any one know how they can now be searched ?

Thanks,  Al

[Alandal]

Found it !

Under Advanced Facilities : https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/ShowPostems.pl

Thanks, Al