Parents of Robert Herd

[Milliepede]

The General Register Office (GRO) index shows mothers maiden names for births now which is invaluable.

You can search for births up to 1917 using exact surname ie Herd or similar spellings which will bring up results for Hurd or Hird etc.

[Del 80]

Thanks for that.....does it have free online access ?

[Milliepede]

It certainly does but you have to register on the site before you can use it. 
Deaths are also on there but not marriages and you can order cheaper e-mailed certificates there too for £6. 

[Del 80]

Thank you Millie.....excellent site.....looks like hours of fun coming up.....Del.

[Milliepede]

Just trying to follow up the Portsea one to see if can rule him out but doesn't seem to be anything else on him save the birth 

Can you confirm what he said his father George occupation was when he (Robert) married please?

Thanks

[Del 80]

On Roberts marriage certificate, to Elizabeth Hunt, in 1875 at Grantham, his father George is given as a labourer...… I did wonder if Elizabeth Towers came from Portsea, but can't find any evidence of this, if she did, then strange that her marriage to George was at Grantham...….

[Milliepede]

After a lot of creative searching for the birth all I come back to is the Portsea one 

It certainly doesn't sound right does it.  I wonder if we could find out if the father of that one was George?

I haven't tried it but I believe you can order a certificate and stipulate you only want it if the father is a specific name but probably still have to pay something. 

I don't want to waste your money so hopefully someone else can advise on that point.  There was a family in Devon I think it was where the father George was a mariner so perhaps the Portsea one belonged there. 

Did Robert have a child before he died so young?  Maybe the name of him or her would give a clue.

[Del 80]

Robert had a daughter, Lizzie, born at Grantham, in 1876 just after he had died, her mother, by now the widow Herd, married John Ayto a couple of years later, it would seem that Lizzie used the surname Ayto for a while, and then switched back to the Herd surname...….when she married Charles Robinson at Barrowby, Grantham, she was given as  Lizzie HEARD....

[Del 80]

Using the GRO index, (which is excellent, thank you Millie) there are 3 births that stand out.....1853 at Shoreditch….1854 at Barnsley…....and the1855 one at Portsea Island....the last one giving the mothers name as Towers, However, on Ancestry there is a baptism and christening, at St. Paul, Chichester, Sussex for a Robert Herd in 1854.....parents George and Elizabeth...….I cannot find a birth for him at Grantham at all....