Search by exact birth date?

speleobat2 · Post by **speleobat2** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 11:25 pm

Is it possible to search any of the records for someone born in 1882 by his exact birthdate?

I just returned from a successful cemetery visiting trip and find myself in a strange position. I found the graves of my grandfather's sister Isabella and her husband John. I now know that her husband's full name was John Fraser Taylor. I also know that his birthdate was Aug. 24, 1882 from his WWI draft registration card. However, I can't pull a birth cert. on him and a census search for 1891 turned up 75 John Taylor's. I can eliminate some of them by middle initial, but not enough!!! The only other clue that I have about him is that he listed his place of birth as Aberdeen on one of the ship's passenger lists, but it could mean Aberdeenshire and I've bought all the obvious birth certs. from SP with no luck matching his birth date. I also know that he was a tool designer-engineer in the US and that he died in 1942, but I can't match him with his family in Scotland. I have all this information for a change instead of too little or none at all and I still can't find this one!

Any ideas?

Carol

Post by **AndrewP** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 4:16 am

Hi Carol,

The only way to search by birth date involves knowing a bit about the registration district and some guess-work. Was it a city district that may have had 2000-ish births in a year, a small town parish with 500-ish in a year, or very rural with 10-ish in a year, or somewhere between these? If you know the answer to that, then assuming the birth-rate was reasonably consistent through the year, then you can have a rough idea of when in the year a birth was from the certificate number. The certificate number is the last segment of the GROS data. The GROS data certificate number re-starts from 0001 each new year.

So if your subject was born in one of the Aberdeen city districts, you can assume that there were over 1000 births a year in each district. From that you know that a certificate number under 0500 is unlikely to be him, for his late August birth. Other than that, you have no real way of finding him by birth date (assuming he was born too late to be found on the IGI). For city districts, it is probably easier if you knew he had a January birth, then you could ignore all certificate numbers greater than 0200.

As you are unsure of where he was born, this method is less useful to you (or no use at all). Unfortunately for search for this man, that means you have no useful way of searching by birth date.

All the best,

AndrewP

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 8:00 am

Hello Carol,

Maybe, in theory, you could do a middle name Fraser search for Aberdeenshire on the Hugh Wallis site, to find a potential Something Fraser Taylor sibling born pre 1875. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/

There are four such births 1854-74. If you check the parentage on the IGI you could maybe follow any promising family through to 1891 to see if John pops up.

Maybe it’s theoretically possible but not necessarily practical or economical.

Just a thought,
Alan

ellenavon · Post by **ellenavon** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:22 am

Hi Carol

How about looking for his parents via his marraige? Were he and Isabella married in Scotland before going to the US? What's Isabella's maiden surname?

Regards

Ellen.

speleobat2 · Post by **speleobat2** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:02 pm

Good morning everyone and thanks for the tips.

I don't mind being impractical, Alan, but of course it's the economical part that hurts! That's a good idea though looking for Fraser Taylor's because I've run across several instances where more than one of the kids had the same middle name.

Ellen: As far as I can find out, John Taylor and Isabella Clerihew didn't marry until after they arrived in the US which complicates the search because the records over here are harder to access and I don't know where or when these two married. It was probably Providence, RI and probably between May, 1916 and Aug. 1917 but Vital Records people over here don't want to here the word "probably"!

Andrew: I had a feeling that the answer was going to be something like that! I'm going to do some searches based on street names and see if I can find a John Taylor anywhere in a likely area. They had to meet somewhere. Of course, he could have been a distant cousin's good friend just visiting......

Carol

JustJean · Post by **JustJean** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:39 pm

Hi Carol

You didn't mention what state he died in or where he is buried. Have you obtained his death certificate? Many of them do list parents names which might help zoom in the family in Scotland. Not impossible that there may have been an obit in the local US paper either.

Best wishes
Jean

speleobat2 · Post by **speleobat2** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 1:53 pm

Hi Jean,

John Taylor died in Michigan either in Wayne County or the city of Detroit and that's the problem. Both the county and the city have farmed out their vital records departments' online access to a company outside the area. This isn't a problem if you want a copy of a relative new certificate, but it's a nightmare if you are looking for anything historical. They want a ton of information including place of death, doctor's or hospital's name etc. If I had all that, I wouldn't need the certificate! Of course, we're talking about searching millions of records here! In 1942, Detroit probably had two million or more residents and John Taylor isn't exactly a rare name!

I'm still hoping to get access to the Detroit Public Library genealogy collection, but the friend I have up there checking into this is very busy and he says the library is having funding problems too. If I can get into that, I should be able to come up with an obituary. None of the Detroit newspapers seem to have their archives online yet.

Carol

JustJean · Post by **JustJean** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 2:58 pm

Hi Carol

Hmmmm......well what about this as a possibility? The Detroit Public Library will not only perform research for you (which might be pricey) they will also send up to 3 microfilm rolls at a time via interlibrary loan to your local library of several Detroit newspaper archives for a modest fee. Don't suppose you know a more precise date than just 1942?.....

http://www.detroit.lib.mi.us/gi/InternetObit.Ltr.pdf

Best wishes
Jean

Post by **marilyn morning** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:32 pm

Carol wrote

As far as I can find out, John Taylor and Isabella Clerihew didn't marry until after they arrived in the US which complicates the search because the records over here are harder to access and I don't know where or when these two married. It was probably Providence, RI and probably between May, 1916 and Aug. 1917 but Vital Records people over here don't want to here the word "probably"!

Hi Carol,

What I can tell you is John Taylor and Isabella Clerihew were not married in the city of Providence, RI between 1911-1920. The only "Clerihew" married in Providence between those years was John Clerihew to Barbara Jackson. So then I checked with the City of Cranston and had the door slammed in my face and forget about the Dept of Vital Records, they want twenty dollars just to do a lookup and you have to be an immediate relative to request it. 1911-1920 records are closed to the public, so don't ask me how I was able to achieve this info.

Regards
Marilyn

speleobat2 · Post by **speleobat2** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 5:46 pm

Jean: The DPL research starts at $15. per name with the exact date of death. It's $25. per hour/1hr min. without the exact date. However, the microfilm option sounds pretty good. I can call the cemetery and get the dates of burial which will put me pretty close to the date of death and order the microfilm--if my local library can handle an inter library mailing. I was just down there and they looked at me like I was crazy when I asked about remote access agreements with other libraries.......

Marilyn: Ouch! You didn't happen to get John and Barbara's date of marriage did you?

I'm not sure where else John and Isabella Taylor would have gotten married unless it was in Ohio if he preceeded her there. Isabella was listed as single on the ship's passenger list from 1916 when she and Jessie brought their father George Clerihew over. They were also listed as his "children" never mind that Jessie was 47 and Isabella was 36 at the time! This also means that Isabella was almost 40 when she had her first child in 1918 and 44 when she had her second in 1922. Yikes!!!

Carol