General Record Office (GRO) certificates
The General Record Office (GRO) holds Church of England records of baptisms, marriages and burials. Certificates of birth, marriage and death from 1837 are held by the Registrar locally.
Indexes can be seen at the Local Studies Library, Abington St., Northampton and at the Mormon Library, Harlestone Rd, Northampton. They are arranged alphabetically by quarter and give the name of the registration district where the event took place, and the reference to the area, volume and page in the original registers.
Please note that these references do not refer to records held by local registrars.
From September 1911 birth indexes give the mother's maiden name and from March 1912 the marriage index for one spouse also records the surname of the other, making it easier to identify the correct entry.
From March 1866 until March 1969 the death indexes give the age at death of the deceased, and from June 1969 they include the date of birth of the deceased. These ages and dates of birth are not necessarily accurate.
Copies of births and deaths can be obtained from local registrars who hold copies of the old registers, but unless you know precisely which church or chapel a marriage took place in, they are not able to help with copies of marriage certificates.
You can apply by post from:
The General Register Office
PO Box 2
Southport
Merseyside
PR8 2JD
Telephone 0870 243 7788
or visit the GRO website.
Military records
Most service records of individual members of the armed forces up to c1920 are held at the National Archives, Ruskin Avenue, Kew, Richmond, TW9 4DU, (see Useful links).
Later service records are kept by the Ministry of Defence and are available only to veterans or their next of kin.
For later Army records you should contact: Army Personnel Centre, Historical Disclosures, Mail Point 400, Kentigern House, 65 Brown Street, Glasgow, G2 8EX. RAF personnel records are held at: RAF Personnel and Training Command, RAF Innsworth, Gloucestershire, GL3 E2.
Details of medals awarded are at Kew except for Army medals after the First World War, for which you should contact: Army Medals Office, MOD, Government Buildings, Worcester Rd., Droitwich, Worcestershire, WR9 8AU.
It is very important to know an individual's regiment when beginning a search for an Army ancestor. There is a useful index to class WO97 for men discharged to pension 1760 - 1854 available on the National Achives Catalogue website, but this index represents only a minority of soldiers of this period.
Unfortunately only about a third of First World War Soldiers Service Records survive. Casualties of the First and Second World Wars are recorded on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website (see Useful Links). The vast majority of Armed Services' administrative and operational records are at the National Archives at Kew.
Military museums have variable archival holdings and can be a useful source of information. Records of the Northamptonshire Regiment are kept at Northampton Central Museum, Guildhall Rd., Northampton, NN1 1DP.
Emigration
The main sources for this are in the National Archives in London, primarily in the records of the Colonial Office, the Home Office, The Board of Trade and the Treasury. Included among them are passenger lists, which generally only survive from 1890 up to 1960.
The lists give names of passengers, age, occupation and destination, and are arranged by year, by port and then according to the sailing date of each ship.
Other records include passports, correspondence, land grants, indentures of assisted emigration, lists of pauper emigrants and emigration entry books.
For further information contact:
National Archives
Ruskin Avenue
Kew
Richmond
TW9 4DH
Newspapers
The Record Office has copies of The Mercury on microfilm for the period May 1720 - December 1850 but the Central Library has a more comprehensive collection - see Related Pages.