birth question?

Question:I am trying to trace my family line back along my Surname and requested my late grandfathers death certificate so I had his date of birth. The DC told me that his DOB was 29th Jan 1925 but when I requested his Birth certificate form the General Register Office, they wrote and told me that they had no record of such a birth on or around that date?
Whats my next step and why could this be?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I am trying to trace my family line back along my Surname and requested my late grandfathers death certificate so I had his date of birth. The DC told me that his DOB was 29th Jan 1925 but when I requested his Birth certificate form the General Register Office, they wrote and told me that they had no record of such a birth on or around that date?
Whats my next step and why could this be?

If you would like to email me I will find the volume and page number which are the numbers that the GRO as their system for finding the right certificate. My email address is mamsgel1956@yahoo.co.uk or you could search through the index and see if you ncan find it that way.

http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certif...

That might of been his date of birth but records back then werent so accurate, try looking at dates on either side of his D.O.B as you may find him there. Also the Chirch parrish where he was born have records of all births marriges and deaths for their area so you may be able to find him, and his parents, that way.

If you know the parish he was born in, there might be a record of his baptism, I don't know if this helps but his marriage certificate would have his age and fathers name on it.

Someone familiar with GRO and what is accessible, can give you more concrete info on the particulars.
My experience is that this is very common.. having an office do a search, not find the record, only to search myself later and find it was there all along. That is true in ANY genealogy search.
It could be as simple as misfiled, incorrect spelling, your having unreliable sources, or just plain lazy clerks.
After it happens to you more than once, it becomes more understandable as a part of the game/hunt.

Have you tryed the net? Good luck.

Do you know where he was born?
If you do, you can contact the Superintendent Registrar of the local Register Office, or you can visit, to check the Register for yourself.
You get a much more "human" reception face to face and I've found that the Registrars locally will put themselves out to help.
Note of warning - don't visit or bother them on a Monday or just after a Bank Holiday when they will have a big backlog of Registrations.
Death Certificates can also be notoriously inaccurate - I hadn't realised that my Mother was 5 years older than my father - she said it was the other way round. If I'd had to Register her death, I would have been 10 years out! Since she predeceased my father, he knew the truth and he Registered her death.

The birth date on the death certificate is given by the informant. If they got it wrong, it will be wrong for ever. The best thing to either write to the district registrar of the place where he was born, or the GRO and ask for a search. I think they do 3 yearly ones.

Can you give us his name and date of death? Given that his birth might be somewhere around 1925, and if he died after the mid-fifties, it is possible that he is included in the SSDI records. That would have a better chance of providing a more accurate birth date than a death certificate whose information was provided by "some informant".

Also, if around 1925 is correct, he might also be found in the 1930 census. Plus, he would be the right age to have registered for the WWII draft - many of those records are available.

This of course only applies if you are talking U.S. If this is from UK then none of the above applies.