WHITEHOUSE FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE
The WFHC indexes of WHITEHOUSE and variants from the General Register Office Birth, Death and Marriage Indexes (England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland) as well as various marriages from other sources.
The marriages here are an important means of finding whether your Whitehouse line is connected with that of a WFHC correspondent, because they have been annotated with WFHC reference numbers.
The term “British” refers to the whole of the British Isles, that is to say England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland (all of which, before partition in 1922, was part of Britain), the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
All files are in MS Excel spreadsheets and can easily be sorted. If you do not have MS Excel, download the Open Office spreadsheet, free from the web.
CONTENTS & LINKS
GRO B 1837-1881 070629.xls (GRO England & Wales Births 1837 to 1881); 1.41 MB, 9814 lines of entry, 145 pp
GRO B 1882-1911 070101.xls (GRO England & Wales Births 1882 to 1911); 1.47 MB, 9489 lines of entry, 140 pp
GRO M 1837-1911 080925.xls (GRO England & Wales Marriages 1837 to 1911, with known spouses and WFHC references added); 1.76 MB, 8907 lines of entry, 151 pp
GRO D 1837-1911 080925.xls (GRO England & Wales Deaths); 1.96 MB, 10765 lines of entry, 159 pp
GRO M ARMY ABRD 1796-1911 070629.xls (GRO England & Wales Marriages of soldiers serving abroad 1796 to 1911: contains one 1830 entry, 5 others 1870-1909); 16 kB, 6 lines of entry, 1 page
GRO SCT BDM 070101.xls (GRO Scotland Births, Deaths & Marriages 1855 to 1911, with known spouses and WFHC references added); 81 kB, 357 lines of entry, 6 pp
NON-GRO M 1837-1911 080925.xls (England & Wales Marriages that ought to be in the GRO Indexes, but have not so far been found there); 17 kB, 9 lines of entry, 1 page
GRO REG DIST KEY 060402.xls (Key to abbreviations used in the names of registration districts and the names adopted in this database to avoid the inconsistencies present in the GRO indexes); 24 kB, 2 pp
GRO VARIANTS LIST 080925.xls (Separate list of all the variants, for GRO British Births, Deaths and Marriages, combined into one file. These comprise phonetic variants, deviations of spelling and Whitehouses known to have been mis-indexed under other names); 61kB, 91 lines of entry, 2 pp
OTHER BRIT M -1911 070924.xls (GRO Ireland Marriages 1845-1911, GRO Jersey Marriages 1842-1911 and one Isle of Man Marriage in 1909); 25kB, 26 lines of entry, 2 pp landscape
AU MARRIAGES 080925.xls (Marriages 1799-1911 extracted from the Australian Vital Records Index and from Official Indexes, with WFHC references added); 78kB, 145 lines of entry, 3 pp
BOYD’S LONDON BUR 070924.xls (Small file of 7 Whitehouses buried in London, earliest 1612, latest 1817)
PRE-GRO M 080925.xls (Referencing file only. This is a different type of file from those above, because it contains ONLY those marriages to which a WFHC reference number has been assigned. It covers church marriages in England & Wales before July 1837, when civil registration began); 68kB, 321 lines of entry, 6pp
CIVIL SERVICE EVIDENCE OF AGE - only 3 entries, so no separate file: see details below
QUALITY
The aim has been to create indexes of high quality, which are easily searchable and can be easily downloaded and manipulated. Features of the indexes are:
- all GRO England & Wales entries have been checked against the index volumes in the Family Records Centre in London or scans thereof.
- variants of the name in the GRO England & Wales indexes are included
- you can search them very simply, either by sorting or by using "Find"
- you can sort them pretty well anyhow you like and then revert to the original order in the GRO index
- the marriage indexes have been amplified to show spouses and the date and place of the marriage, where known
MS Excel has been used, because it is widely available and requires only a low level of skill to use it. Although primarily a spreadsheet, it is very easy to move text around it and has a data sort function.
GRO ENGLAND & WALES: DETAILED COMMENTS COLUMN BY COLUMN
1. General – births, deaths and marriages
"OO" means the original order as it appears in the GRO indexes. Of course, there may be some minor deviation here and there, because of manuscript entries in the index, the occasional transcription in a different order and the insertion of the variants. A numbering sequence has been used, running right through from 1837 Q3 (the third quarter of 1837, beginning 1st July 1837) when civil registration began, to the end of the WFHC index. There are separate sequences for birth, death and marriage. This means (1) that if you get into a mess sorting the file, you can always revert to the original order and (2) you can check the accuracy of the index against the GRO index.
"E" means the event (birth, death or marriage). This is useful when you want to create a combined file of births, deaths and marriages, for example to find all the WHITEHOUSE, Cecilia names and compare the dates. Also, taken together with "OO", it means that each entry has its own unique identifier.
“R Yr” and “Q” show the year and quarter familiar to all genealogists, the quarters beginning on 1st January, March, July and October. The usual warning applies - events might be registered in the quarter after they occur. Also, they might not be registered at all, or, if registered, not transmitted to the General Register Office.
“ W F’name 1” shows the first forename of the Whitehouse.
“W F’name 2” shows the second and subsequent forenames. In 1866, second names were reduced to initials, but this retrograde move was abolished the following year, when full second names were again given, until the end of 1910. An exception occurred in the printed index books where the first forename was a long one and it was the first entry alphabetically. Here, the second name was reduced to an initial to save spilling over onto a second line of type. From 1866, third forenames were reduced to initials.
A feature of the WFHC index is the facility to search by second forename. This should always be done when an exhaustive search is required. In some instances, the GRO indexes contain only the first letter of a forename, particularly a third forename. This is shown in the WFHC index with no full stop (period) after it. A search can be made for a third forename by selecting the "W F’name 2" column and putting a space, followed by the first letter of the desired forename, into "Find". This works because the second forename is not preceded by a space, but the third and fourth are. To review all third forenames, put a space followed by the wild card "?" into “Find”. (This works in Excel, but might be different in other programs).
When searching exhaustively, it is advisable to look a little around each forename, as there are occasional weird spellings in the GRO index, for example Immanuel, Jessee, Lynder, Rueben. Try also putting part of the name into "Find".
“V” is the column for detecting variants. A lower case “v” in this column means that the entry will not be found in the GRO index under Whitehouse, but under a variant. The symbol “d” means duplicate and signifies that the GRO index lists both Whitehouse and the variant with the same volume and page number. To find the nature of the variant, consult the variants list file (link above). The symbol "a" indicates an entry in the Alternative Female names Marriages file (link above). You might occasionally see the symbol “g”. Ignore this - it is inserted to enable me to select certain entries for updating a Guild of One-name Studies index.
The exact nature of a variant can be found using the GRO VARIANTS LIST file (link above). Most are not proper variants in the genealogical sense, but the result of dialect pronunciation, mis-spelling and mis-indexing.
A few marriage entries found under Whitehouse, but suspected of being or known to be another name, have been removed. These are as follows:
|
E |
R Yr |
Q |
W Forename(s) |
Reg Dist |
Vol |
Page |
Other name |
|
M |
1840 |
4 |
Mary Ann |
Portsea I |
7 |
232 |
Whitehorn |
|
M |
1840 |
4 |
William James |
London |
2 |
91 |
Whitehorn |
|
M |
1851 |
1 |
Annis |
Wolstanton |
17 |
333 |
Whitehurst |
|
M |
1851 |
1 |
James |
Brackley |
15 |
271 |
Whitehurst |
|
M |
1851 |
1 |
Thomas |
Congleton |
19 |
86 |
Whitehurst |
|
M |
1849 |
3 |
Elizabeth |
Dudley |
18 |
381 |
Woodhouse |
In some marriage entries, the bride or groom has been indexed twice, apparently to correct a minor error in the forename. However, the respective spouse is registered only once, presumably because that forename was correct.
The column immediately following is labelled “A” in the deaths index. It is used to record the age at death, from 1866 onwards.
In the deaths index, the calculated year of birth is arrived at by subtracting age at death from year of registration of the death. Of course, it is only approximate. Since no ages at death were given until 1866, the column is blank for all years of registration from 1837 to 1865. Great care is needed when searching the database, because it consists of two separate sets of entries, according to registration years. If an ancestor was born in, say, 1840, he might have died young, in which case he will be in the 1837 to 1865 registration years series and there will be a blank space in the Calc Birth Yr column or he might have lived to be 26 or over, in which case he will have died in 1866 or later and can be searched among registration years 1866 to 1911 using his birth date.
“Reg Dist” shows the Registration District. The clerks made mistakes, misspelling the name of the Registration District. These have been corrected. The separate file GRO REG DIST KEY (see link above) shows how misspelt and abbreviated Registration Districts have been treated in the WFHC index. It also provides guidance as to the whereabouts of some of the more obscure places.
“Vol” refers to the volume number of the Registration District in the original registers. England & Wales were divided for registration purposes firstly by areas, then by registration districts. Since the original registers are arranged by the area of the Registration District, this is also the volume number of the register. In the GRO indexes, the volume /area number is given and the same practice is followed here in the WFHC version. Strictly, it is unnecessary, so long as the Registration District is given correctly. Sometimes, regrettably, it is not. For example, "Richmond" could mean Richmond, Yorkshire in area 9d or Richmond, Surrey in area 2a. The area numbers help to resolve such ambiguities, although in the WFHC index the registration district is shown correctly.
Sometimes, the area number given in the GRO index is incorrect for the stated Registration District. Here, it is assumed that it is the number that is at fault and it has been corrected.
2. Marriages
The WFHC marriage index contains additional columns, as follows
“Sp Surname” and “Sp Forename(s)” give details of the spouse, that is to say the bride or groom who married the Whitehouse groom or bride, respectively. Up to and including 1911, the GRO marriage indexes are not cross-referenced to show the name of the spouse. These columns are an attempt to help with this problem. The spouse names were taken from the International Genealogical Index (IGI), church registers, local BMD indexes, the Guild of One-Name Studies marriage index and the personal family histories of correspondents. ALL THE ENTRIES IN THEM HAVE BEEN CHECKED UNDER THE WHITEHOUSE NAME AND THE SPOUSE NAME FOR A MATCH BY VOLUME AND PAGE NUMBER. NO UN-MATCHED ENTRIES HAVE BEEN INCLUDED IN THE WFHC INDEX, no matter how strong the other evidence might be. EQUALLY, NO MATCHES IN THE GRO INDEX HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE WFHC INDEX UNLESS THERE IS SOME EVIDENCE THAT THE MARRIAGE TOOK PLACE BETWEEN THE TWO PARTIES.
There are just 5 minor exceptions to the “must match” rule, where the page numbers in the GRO indexes differ by one digit between Whitehouse and spouse. Here, I have worked out which one is correct.
The WFHC index is firmly based on the GRO indexes, rather than on church registers etc. Thus, the names given here are as they appear in the GRO indexes, whether they are believed in error or not. However, where an alternative name of a spouse is evident from another source, this is given in square brackets after the name given in the GRO indexes. This order is always followed. For example, in 1837 4th quarter, Letitia Whitehouse is recorded in the GRO index as having married Richard Piters. A local index says Richard Peters, which is far more likely. The WFHC index records the name as PITERS [PETERS]. It is sensible, therefore, to try “Find” if you do not come upon the surname that you are looking for by other means.
In a few cases, where the spouse surname is very long, e.g. CHELLINGSWORTH, it has been broken with a hyphen. If you are searching for a long name using "Find", put in the first six (say) letters only.
A very large number of Whitehouse marriages now have an assigned spouse. This is very valuable information, not only for what it says, but for what it doesn't say. It means that many possibilities can be eliminated and the search for a particular spouse narrowed a great deal.
“Ref” indicates the WFHC reference of the correspondent(s) in whose family tree this marriage occurs. This is rather loosely put, as it is subject to in-house indexing rules. Basically, these require the marriage to be either in the line of ascent researched by the correspondent or collateral with it at the level of brother or sister. However, in extensive trees in which there is more than one correspondent, where the marriage cannot be identified by this rule with a particular correspondent, all the correspondents are assigned to that marriage.
“Date” gives the marriage date in yyyy-mm-dd form: please be careful when reading them !! Also, many of them have not been verified. If the month or day is not known, "mm" or "dd" will appear in the entry.
“Place” includes churches and Register Offices. Where churches are given as simply the name of the place, e.g. "Rushall", it will usually mean the parish church. Certificates frequently refer to a marriage as having taken place in the parish church and here the policy has been to name the church. Church names have been abbreviated: "St Bt" means St Bartholomew and "St P & P" St Peter and St Paul. St John the Baptist is “St John B”, St John the Evangelist “St John E”. “AA” means “All Angels”. The parish church in Basford, Notts is St. Leodegarius, abbreviated to "St Leo".
The reason that many entries include a place but no date is usually that they are taken from a local BMD index which gives only a year. This is narrowed down to the quarter of registration when the match is found in the GRO indexes.
Civil marriages (CM) are those which take place before a Registrar, in a Registered Building (RB) or Register Office (RO). For practical purposes, there is no difference between the designations CM, RB and RO - they all signify a marriage before a Registrar, rather than in a church.
It would be greatly appreciated if anyone who can help by adding a spouse, date or name of a church would contact me. Please go back to the index page for the contact link, which is in REGISTRATION FAQs, Section 6.
ALTERNATIVE FEMALE NAMES IN MARRIAGES (“WIDOW MARRIAGES”)
This file has been removed, because the labour of keeping it up to date is not now considered worthwhile. It will be replaced almost entirely by the new marriage detail files when they come onstream and by individual trees in which previous and later marriages are mentioned.
NON-GRO MARRIAGES: DETAILED COMMENTS
This term is given to marriages that ought to be found in the GRO indexes, because they are known to have taken place, yet so far have not been found. I say “so far”, because this index used to be a lot bigger, but improved searching and help from “Free BMD” revealed many supposedly missing marriages indexed under other names. In some instances a suitable GRO reference has been found for the Whitehouse, but no matching volume and page reference for the spouse. A list of the few such marriages is in the NON-GRO M file.
SCOTLAND: DETAILED COMMENTS
In general, the indexing system used is as far as possible the same as for England & Wales. The following additional comments apply. Scottish civil registration began in 1855. The index provided here is taken mainly from the GRO Scotland computer, but the recent additions of births and deaths for 1902-1911 come from microfilm of the official index books. The database relates to WHITEHOUSE only. Variants are not covered. Column A refers to the order on the computer arranged in the order births, deaths and marriages, each of these being sub-divided into two separate sections - males, then females. Years are not divided into quarters in the Scottish indexes. Since the GRO Scotland computer cuts the forenames off after 15 characters (including spaces), all entries of 15 characters, except the single entry under "Service returns", have been checked for completeness against a microfilm of the indexes. The abbreviation "MS" in notes appearing in the Forenames 2+ column means "maiden surname" and "MMS" means "mother's maiden surname". The Registration District and number are as on the GRO Scotland computer, but with "G" and "EH" added to help to identify districts in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
OTHER BRITISH MARRIAGES: DETAILED COMMENTS
The 14 Irish marriages are taken from the Irish GRO. Up to 1870, the church registers were consulted at the LDS Hyde Park Family History Centre and the full details provided, with just the one exception where the Hyde Park Centre did not have film 0101510 for Alfred Whitehouse, 1867. For 1871 to 1911, the church registers were not made available and so only the reference for the WHITEHOUSE entry is given. As with England & Wales, there is no cross-referencing, so spouse names are unavailable from the official index.
For Jersey, a search was made in the Channel Islands Family History Society indexes to individual parishes and to the GRO Jersey (Supt. Registrar), which begin in 1842. These include non-Anglican marriages, except for Trinity parish. The search threw up just 2 Whitehouse marriages (Ann, 1845 and Samuel, 1854). The other Channel Islands have not been searched.
The Isle of Man had no central registry. There were 4 district registries. One marriage in the Douglas registry (Harold Cecil, 1909), was found on-line and has been included.
The index is provided in Surname, Forename and date order, but when a possibly relevant church entry has been found, it should be re-sorted into Database ref. (1st column) and Gender (2nd column) order. This is because the church entries occupy two lines, designated M (male) and F (female), for each individual database ref. number. Where the church entry is unavailable, just the one line appears, containing the GRO reference.
AUSTRALIAN MARRIAGES: DETAILED COMMENTS
Civil registration of births, deaths and marriages in Australia began at various different times in the individual states, namely
Australian Capital Territory (ACT): 1930
New South Wales (NSW): 1856
Northern Territory (NT): 1870
Queensland (QLD): 1856
South Australia (SA): 1842
Tasmania (TAS): 1838
Victoria (VIC): 1853
Western Australia (WA): 1841
This index of marriages runs from the earliest times up to 1911. It incorporates data taken from the Australian Vital Records Index, published by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, which covers New South Wales (1788–1888), Tasmania (1803–1899), Victoria (1837–1888), and Western Australia (1841–1905) only. Although it is stated to contain about 4.5 million records of births, christenings, marriages, and deaths, it is reputedly only 70 to 80% complete. The Tasmanian entries have ages and accurate dates. The AVRI index was supplemented by firstly from information supplied by correspondents and secondly by using the on-line records from the register offices of Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales; Register Office references appear in the last column but one on the right.
For sorting purposes, the months and days missing from the data, have been entered as “mm-dd”.
BOYD’S LONDON BURIALS: DETAILED COMMENTS
This is an extraction from an index that combines Boyd’s London Burials (over 240,000), completed in 1934, and Cliff Webb’s London City Burials (over 35,000). The latter are nearly all from printed sources and nearly all in the range 1813-1854. The 7 Whitehouse entries relate to the years 1612, 1749, 1751, 1752, 1778, 1814 and 1817. It is suspected that there must be many more than this, particularly in the Clerkenwell and Finsbury areas.
PRE-GRO MARRIAGES REFERENCING FILE: DETAILED COMMENTS
The term “Pre-GRO marriages” means marriages in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland that took place before civil registration began. In other words, they are marriages that can only be found in parish registers.
This referencing file has been established solely in order to provide an additional means of referencing correspondents’ trees. It differs from most of the other files, in that it is not a complete record of all pre-GRO marriages of Whitehouses. It covers only those marriages which are known or believed to belong to the tree of a WFHC correspondent.
The file is incomplete, even for its above-stated objective. Policy is to add to this file all new trees and all trees re-indexed under the Re-indexing, Archiving, Digitisation and Paper-destruction project (“RADAP”), by which I am getting rid of all the paper files that I have built up over more than 25 years. I do have a card index which covers correspondents’ trees so far as known to me up to October 2001. However, when these trees come up for re-examination under RADAP, using the latest available records, additional marriage entries and occasional errors are found. Therefore, so as to proceed in an orderly, comprehensive, way, only those files which are digitised are included in the Pre-GRO Marriages Referencing File. This file will grow every quarter as more files are digitised.
On the other hand, where a correspondent’s tree includes a GRO marriage of a Whitehouse, it will almost certainly be indexed in the GRO Marriage file, even if the tree has not yet been digitised under RADAP.
A reference is indexed when, on the balance of probabilities, it is correct. The more rigorous requirement of “beyond reasonable doubt” has not been applied. The more doubtful references have a question mark (query symbol) after them. Normally, the question mark will apply to all the references, but where one is relatively certain and the other relatively doubtful, the latter will carry the question mark and they will be a separated by a semi-colon.
CIVIL SERVICE EVIDENCE OF AGE: DETAILS
These records, indexed by “Findmypast” in 2007, relate to people who, from 1855 onwards, wanted to take the Civil Service entry examination, but could not supply a birth certificate from the GRO (England & Wales), for example because they were born abroad or the birth was never registered or they born before civil registration began. It was also required for the purposes of the civil service pension scheme which came into being in 1859. Such people provided evidence as best they could, for example in the form of a Statutory Declaration (a simple sworn statement) or a foreign birth certificate. The Civil Service Commission kept these records for those born overseas and for unsuccessful applicants (who might try again). Some 64,300 people have been documented in this way, giving rise to 190,000 pages of material. The range of birth dates is from 1752 to 1948. The records are being held by the Society of Genealogists, but public access (even to SoG members) is not available. The only way to see them is to apply to the SoG, quoting the reference given in the index, and paying a fee of £14 for a photocopy. For more detail, see the SoG website or the article on pages 26 & 27 of “Family Tree Magazine”, February 2008.
There are just three Whitehouse entries, as follows:
1. Charles WHITEHOUSE b. 13 Oct 1836 Haverhill SFK, ref. 2050 003
2. Albert WHITEHOUSE b.11 Aug 1839 Dudley WOR, ref. Z904 133
3. William Jayes WHITEHOUSE b. 15 Oct 1903 Lichfield STS, ref. Z172 660 199/2
No. 1 is the excise officer referenced to WFHC correspondents 362 & 414. No. 2 is probably the son of Henry WHITEHOUSE (Agent) and Harriet, living at Flood St. in central Dudley on the 1841 census: he is waiting for a descendant to “claim” him. No. 3 might be an illegitimate child of Esther Annie JAYES, who married William Henry WHITEHOUSE in the 4th quarter of 1904 at Smethwick St Paul. If so, he is also waiting to be “claimed”.
Keith