Birth certificates

In general, you can use birth, marriage and death certificates to extend your family tree back in time. If you can’t find an entry, there is a chance that the event occurred overseas, for which separate indexes have been compiled – though they are not comprehensive.

Scotland and Ireland maintained their own systems of civil registration, and you would need to contact the relevant Register Offices for information about how to search for and obtain duplicate certificates. In England and Wales, many people simply didn’t bother to use the system when it was first introduced, and it took the introduction of more stringent measures in 1875 to enforce wider coverage. .

Consequently, before this date you might not find an entry, so you should consider local sources such as parish registers to help you track down the event you are looking for.