Interesting feature in FindMyPast trees

[andrewalston]

I've been having a play with an FindMyPast tree for someone else, and noticed an unexpected feature.

If I follow up a hint for a birth registration, the system suggests a mother's maiden name EVEN FOR 19th CENTURY EVENTS!

Presumably they are tapping in to the GRO's database somehow.

The same facility has not appeared on their normal "England & Wales Births" database, which is where their transcription link leads to. I wonder if it will in future?

[danuslave]

I've just found the same thing and have contacted FindMyPast to see how they do it. Watch this space!

[cuffie81]

That FindMyPast has the MMN on birth registrations has been discussed before and people had noticed it in early 2018 (although I can't find a reference for that now).

The last time I looked into this they were a bit patchy, some records had the MMN and others didn't (comparing with the GRO's own index). That might have changed since though.

One benefit, as noted by clarec on the linked thread, is that it means births can be searched on FindMyPast using MMN, without having to enter the forename or surname.

[JohninSussex]

How interesting!

One irritation in the GRO look up if you are wanting to find all the births of a particular family, is that you have to do a search for males and females separately, and then have to search in 5-year intervals.

Does this mean you can do that search in one go and specify your own date range?

[LizzieL]

FindMyPast seems to have some less useful features as well. I have just been looking at the timeline for one of my ancestors and it says he was married on 12 March 1799, beside it is a link to click for the marriage record. Which I did, and it came up with no results. When I looked more closely at the search form, it had kindly autofilled for me, the Civil Marriage and Divorce box was ticked, not the Parish Marriages. So no wonder there were no results showing for a pre-July 1837 marriage.

[danuslave]

I have received the following reply from FindMyPast

This information has been added by the GRO (General register office) to their own transcriptions by cross referencing with a third record set, we are currently in the process of adding this information to our own records, though we do not have a time frame for completion at the moment.

You can review the records here

https://www.gov.uk/general-register-office

So now we all know!