Register of Corrected Entries.....

[rye470]

Hi All,

Can anyone tell me exactly what the Register of Corrected Entries are. I have 7 death certificates with Vol No., Page and Dates entered at the side of the death entry. I also have a marraige certificate with a notation at the side. Seems my G Grandmother's sister married a bigamist.

Is it possible to get any information from these registers?


Christine.

[AndrewP]

Hi Christine,

The Registers of Corrected Entries (RCEs) are the books which hold amendments to the original birth, death and marriage certificates. Corrections made at the time of issue of the certificate are made on the original certificate. Corrections made after that are made as RCEs.

These can be corrections to administrative errors. But more useful to genealogists are the others, giving information supplementary to that already given on the original certificates.

The most genealogically useful RCEs are as follows. RCEs pertaining to birth certificates can offer information regarding paternity. RCEs for marriage certificates are less common, but some can show information regarding a divorce ending that marriage (up to 1983, from 1984, divorces are in a separate register). For death certificates, the most common use of an RCE is regarding the cause of death - it can offer new information regarding the cause of death, or it can confirm that the cause of death on the original certificate was correct. There are other types of corrections to certificates, the list above shows only examples of the most regular types.

The RCE is made via a court, most commonly the sheriff court. It is signed off by the procurator fiscal, and passed to the registrar for the district where the original certificate was issued (or the registrar of the district that has succeeded the original office if that one is no longer there). The registrar then enters the court's findings into the Register of Corrected Entries. Each registration office has a Register if Corrected Entries which holds corrections to birth, death and marriage certificates, mixed in together, and run in order of date of issue of the RCE, usually over the course of a number of years until that volume is full. Each page holds one certificate.

I believe that if you order a copy of a certificate to be sent to you from ScotlandsPeople and there is an RCE pertaining to it, a copy of the RCE will be provided too. Previously the RCE would be transcribed onto the back of the certificate. Now that the RCEs have been digitally imaged as part of GROS's DIGROS project I believe it is a copy of the RCE you receive rather than a transcription. At some stage (later this year?) the RCEs should become available online at ScotlandsPeople. As I understand it, the imaging is complete, but the complexity of the indexing is the delaying factor.

In the meantime, the RCEs should be available to order via the internet, although I am unclear if this should be from ScotlandsPeople or from GROS.

All the best,

AndrewP

[Alcluith]

In the meantime, the RCEs should be available to order via the internet, although I am unclear if this should be from ScotlandsPeople or from GROS.

I was informed that you can get a copy of the RCE from the office where the event was first registered.