For a one-name study whose origins are in the United Kingdom, birth, marriage and death certificates (or the information contained therein) are a fundamental building block enabling reconstruction of families. Registration of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales has been ongoing since 1837. The Millington one-name study is a comparatively large one, to the end of 2018, there have been 27,113 births, 18,572 marriages and 17,750 deaths.

Certificates can be purchased from the General Register Office at £11 a time, though PDF copies of early births and deaths are available at £7. There is no other way to get at the information recorded on birth or death certificates, though for marriages if the event took place in a church then it might be possible to find a copy of the marriage register in a record office or increasingly online on one of genealogy data providers such as Ancestry or FindMyPast.

Clearly buying copies of all of the certificates would be impractical, costing several hundred thousand pounds. Hence this appeal! If anyone has copies of birth, marriage or death certificates that they would be prepared to share with the Millington one-name study, we would be delighted to receive them (in the case of marriage certificates, the study only requires copies of marriages that took place outside of the Church of England or the Church in Wales). Information on certificates is used solely for family reconstruction and made available in the Millington archive (via Registration only). Copies of certificates are not shared with other parties except with the explicit permission of the provider.

To send a copy of one or more certificates use this link to contact the study. Many thanks in advance,

Paul Millington