Trying to order a birth certificate online…Help!

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On FreeBMD you can choose either the exact spelling or similar ones, and a wider date limit. They also have information on the names and boundaries of registration districts in the past, which may put the birth in a neighbouring district to the one you thought it was in.

The birth may have been registered in a different surname, if the mother wasn't married to the father. I found my grandmother under her mother's name. They married a year later (when her brother was about to be born)

Shinamae

I remember ordering a birth certificate a few years ago and it was much less complicated than this…

So many people are researching their family history and ordering certificates now. Perhaps if the request was a bit vague they used to have the time to search individually for the certificate the buyer meant. Now the exact references are available online and the whole thing has to be more accurate.

If you have problems finding the birth either on Free BMD or Ancestry, try to vary the spellings and or dates, even the place of birth. If you still can’t find it try using the mothers Maiden name.

GRO records from 1837.

I remember ordering a birth certificate a few years ago and it was much less complicated than this…

How far back do the GRO records go?

Find out where the registration offices are in the county you want. They do not necessarily match with the main towns but often the old county towns. You will also find some counties only have a few offices and they cover quite a large area and other towns.
One I often have to use the town is one of the largest in the county but does not have an office. It is cut into two by a river and it depends on which side of the river they as to which of two other towns they are registered in.
Do not be tempted to use Ancestry which I have in desperation they charge much more than the official GRO at Liverpool.

Okay, thanks for all your help and advice

If you don't know the folio and page references, it is possible to have the GRO look up the entry in the index and find them - but you have to pay extra for that. It is very easy to search in FreeBMD yourself.

I agree with others try to put the actual town / village of birth as this may help

Agreed, you have put Devon which is a county and not a district. If the person was born in Torquay sometime in Jan-Mar 1945 then their details might read:
District: Torquay
Year: 1945
Quarter: Mar (that covers Jan, Feb, Mar)
Volume no: 67
Page no: 22
Written Torquay Mar 1945 67.22
You need to find those details on FreeBMD to order the certificate. These are references to pages in a book (volume) which is how the records were kept.

www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl

vol page

Smith John Sheffield 9c725

it will have volume and page number on a search this is to show what i mean.

Brahumbug

You haven't entered the volume and page number by the look of it. Did you get the GRO reference? You can get it from FREEBMD.

Thanks, but I have no idea what that actually means the volume and the page number?

You haven't entered the volume and page number by the look of it. Did you get the GRO reference? You can get it from FREEBMD.

I’ve used this service a few times without any problems. Double check all spellings and dates, a simple typo will mean it doesn’t find a match.

Did you fill in all of those little boxes correctly? If you made even one tiny mistake in the reference, or missed out one digit, they will say that they can't find it. You can double check the references on FreeBMD index search (for England and Wales) www.freebmd.org.uk/search

Do you know the actual district? Devon would be classed as County of, I think.

What do the little ? marks next to volume and page say Shinamae?