Finding siblings

[TerraNostra]

I'm just a dabbler so please forgive me for this very basic question.

Am I right in thinking that there is no quick way to find out the names of all a woman's children via the online databases (I use Find My Past and Scotland's People)?

I'm finding that a birth certificate is in the name of the person born and you can't search for birth certificates via the mother's name alone. Or the father's. Is that right?

I know you can find lists of children if you can find the woman in a census, but that only covers children who were alive and living with her on that day. I also know that some censuses will state number of children of the marriage living and deceased but no more detail than that.

Essentially I'd like to know how many siblings my great-grandmother had, then trace what became of them all.

If they were born after 1837, a rigorous search of the GRO indexes might do it.

Find the one you know about and then go forward and back in four year tranches until you don't get any more.

Time consuming, it has worked for me in similar circumstances.

In brief, you're right.

Scotland's People doesn't give the mother's maiden name in the index search for births, just the child's name, sex, year of birth and registration district. If you are looking for a very unusual surname and they were all born in Orkney for example, you probably could identify sets of siblings. But if your surname is Smith, Brown, Taylor or Reid and you're looking in Glasgow, you've no chance.

GRO indexes apply to England and Wales only.

The only thing you can do is to narrow the possibilities as much as you can, then bite the bullet and pay for the full record which will show father and mother.

On Ancestry a search of an ancestor will bring up other researcher's family trees containing the same name. You can check their trees to see if they are referring to your ancestor and they may have more information on the family (obviously you need to thoroughly check other people's research, it's not necessarily correct). Sometimes their tree may contain photos of your extended family which is always exciting!

Thank you. My relatives are all in Scotland at grandparent level and above but, out of interest, what is GRO?

I haven't tried Ancestry, I feel like it might end up a rabbit hole!

GRO is for English records.

You have already mentioned using the Censuses so that will go a good way. The 1911 Census also states how many children born and still alive. Not sure what period you are looking at ? You can look at transcriptions of the Scottish Census on Ancestry which is helpful before paying on SP for the actual one. You could take a free 7 day trial to Ancestry.

General Register Office = England and Wales.

You don't say if you are in Scotland but one way of cutting the cost of Scotland's People - which can be really expensive if you're looking for a Mary Smith married to a Thomas Brown - is by booking a seat at one of the centres which offer day access to Scotland's People. It costs £15 for the day and you can look at as many records as you want.

www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/visit-us

My ancestors are mainly English so I don't know if this would work for Scotland. I also use Find My Past as well as Ancestry.

To find children, I search on FMP for births with that last name in the 20 years after the marriage date (ie, if the marriage was 1860, then I search 1870 + 10 years either side). I then check each record to see if the mother's maiden name matches. A bit tedious, not perfect but has added to my knowledge.

Could you try census records? That would give you children living at home at any one time and you can check over a couple of decades?

What religion were they? It can help to search parish registers for baptisms.

Sorry to hijack OP, I’m struggling with this too. I found my Grandads mother (he died in 1999, I was 14, in his 50s, NC with his family for unspecified reasons).

Ancestry gave me his parents names. They’re on several different trees. One states they had 11 children over 17 years (not all are listed) and one states they had 13 children over 14 years (again, not all are listed).

The most puzzling thing is that I know he has an identical twin because he turned up at the funeral, and I thought I was losing my fucking mind. I was outside the Church taking a breather when I spotted him, hovering across the road. Being a teenager, I obviously walked straight over (not something I’d do as an adult!) and had a very brief, strange conversation with him, then he left.

I mentioned this to my Uncle a few hours later, he confirmed the twin exists and I wasn’t going batshit, and seemed really puzzled as to how he knew.

There are some other things about that side that I grew up being told that I’ve found are demonstrably not true, although I’ve always taken anything my Grandmother says with a pinch of salt.

If you know your Grandad's mother's maiden name you can search the Index at www.gro.gov.uk for the relevant period and you should be able to come up with a list of children.

Also, if Grandad was a twin, the two birth registrations should be adjacent to each other in the register.

Posted too soon.

Don't rely on Ancestry trees. They are notoriously inaccurate.

Do your own research and take responsibility for it.

What a fascinating story @WolvesOfTheCalla ! I hope you find out more, do come back and update if you do.

If not very recent but since 1910 try freebmd and entering the maiden name or married name if remarried.

Agree. Even if every tree on there says the same thing it's only because it's either copied from another tree or a record on Ancestry is the only likely one so is taken as gospel.
As an example, my great grandmother appears on at least 20 Ancestry trees with an incorrect death date in 1943 because it's the only 'possible' one on there. I have her death certificate, grave details etc from 1924 but this is not on Ancestry as the records don't exist any more for that period in the area she lived. Interestingly the owners of the other trees aren't bothered by facts and continue to use incorrect information! So beware!

Agree with treating Ancestry trees with extreme skepticism. Some are great, with proper references and linked documents to prove the research has been dome properly. Other ones are complete mince. And IMHO the mince outweighs the decent.

So many click and collect "genealogists" who just click and accept every single hint which ancestry offers without checking the sources and engaging some critical thinking. One of the hardest thing any professional genealogist has to do is to tell these people that their research is basically nonsense, and they have to start again.

The naming conventions can give clues:
Scottish naming convention I think the 1911 census gave details of how many children a woman had had and how many were surviving at that point.

Scottish naming conventions are a clue - but mustn't be relied upon.

yes the 1911 census asked how many children had been "born of the marriage" and how many were still living.

I used Ancestry trees as a last resort as my GM is deeply unpleasant and I’ve spent too many years failing to extract his mother’s name from her. GD also changed his surname prior to marrying GM, she wouldn’t give me the original surname either.

I found it via a second cousin who’s GM was a massive gossip and wrote/kept journals, she died recently and he came across the one with the original surname and a bunch of speculation about my GD He’s one of the few family members that’s on my SM as we work in adjacent fields and isn’t a complete tossed!

Luckily, it came with a photo of her and several of the siblings and it is, without a doubt, his mother and siblings.

I’ll check the GRO tonight; I’m a bit rusty as it’s been a while since I did this (last side of the family I did was my paternal GGPs and oh boy, there was a LOT of very interesting and heart breaking stuff - I had everyone’s names and DOB for that, though. Sitting my Grandmother down to explain just why her father never spoke about his parents or his life prior to meeting her mother was not a fun day.) and I’ve never done it with such little information.

What is even stranger is that everyone on the tree lives/lived in the towns surrounding my hometown - I’d always assumed GD had moved as far away as possible to avoid them.