Who When Where

Surname - the last two letters are definitely ON - by comparison with 'Johnstown' The first letter could be a W or even N (look at the first letter of 'Mary') But I don't see an S in between, and the I seems more like an E; the middle appears more like ELL So in fact I think it could be WELLON > NEL...

Well! I have just received a response by email from GRO (I sent in a query last week) and it seems that they will send out the certificate again. Let's hope it arrives soon!

GRO - GRRR! I sent for two death certificates on 16th and 18th April (Good Friday and Easter Monday - public holidays); the first was for a lady who died in 1956, and a pdf was despatched on the specified day, 25th April. The second was for her sister, who died in 1970. This meant that a copy of the...

Indeed - I have become very sceptical of the information on old gravestones. Who has the responsibility of updating the names and dates on a long-standing family tomb? The example that came to mind was a man whose death date was incorrectly recorded on his gravestone, while his death was reported se...

On the other hand .... newspaper BMD announcements can be very useful correctives to the other inaccurate information that Thunder mentioned. Third-party reports are not guaranteed to get everything correct: a 'colour' piece or feature reporting that X died in 1899 at the age of 85, or even a graves...

Ah, thank you both for these informative replies. So, since the death occurred in 1879, I suppose that a physician was not present at the death, so no death cert was needed. On the other hand, the day of death was noted in the findagrave record via FamilySearch, so the cemetery must have recorded th...

Does anyone have experience of ordering a death certificate from the USA? I have found it very frustrating! I am trying to find the 'cause of death' for a blood relative who emigrated from Yorkshire to USA in 1855 - died in Fort Atkinson, Jefferson County, Wisconsin on 12th Sept 1879 (confirmed by d...

I thought that IHS stood for Jesus Hominum Salvator but I have just found a Catholic website that tells us it is actually the first three letters of the name Jesus in Greek - it became a sort of secret symbol, rather like the fish. As to the elaborate crosses on the graves, I think there may have be...

I have been satisfied with the last four records I requested - mostly PDFs which were sent on the specified date.
The most recent one has been slower: a marriage cert (1873) ordered on 27 Nov; estimated despatch 3 Dec; actual despatch 8th Dec.

At what point does one's archive of documents become suitable for deposit in County Archives or equivalent? And how does one go about this? I remember seeing a basket of old property deeds outside a charity bookshop ... and a few years ago someone turned up at my father's door with the old deeds for...