A Civil Registration Certificate can have unknown family gold!

Susanna Barrett with daughters
Susanna (L) and Elizabeth

When doing your family history research there may be a temptation to avoid getting the civil registration certificate in confirmation of your enquiries – it may be that you think the parish record for baptism, marriage and burial conveys the essential information that you need and you can make do without exact dates of a birth or death. Clearly, its significance depends upon your research priorities and whether you are only tracking direct ancestors for the present or extending it to those to who you are indirectly related, like your ancestor’s siblings, their children and descendants. Of course, you might just want to save on the fee if you want to avoid buying them in quantity. 

But there are limits to taking the easy way on certificates, as they can contain  veritable ‘hidden gold’ in terms of the information they have and may open up further avenues for more research to give an even better ‘picture’ of a specific area of your family history that may otherwise have been missed.  The case of my paternal great, great Grandmother, SUSANNA BARRATT is a case in point which it may be worth reiterating here. 

Susanna Proctor was born and raised in Starcross, which is situated directly opposite Exmouth on the River Exe, and married James Barratt form Tavistock. A typical working class family of the time, James was a labourer until mid-life when he became a ‘boatman’. Living in Starcross they had a family of eight children [not all of them reaching adulthood] and both had tragic ends to their lives. 

Whilst I had details from the Parish register of her burial in 1895 [18th December] the Parish Burial Register offered up very little other than the basic information as this was not one of those instances where the Curate was exceptional and wrote a side note about the death as sometimes happens. She was seventy-nine years old which was a decent age for the time and it would have been tempting to leave it at that. However, the civil registration certificate revealed to me that hers was no ordinary passing. 

Susanna Barrett nee Proctor
Death Certificate

As can be seen from the death certificate ...(above), Susanna’s death was the subject of an Inquest that had met in the Courtenay Arms in Starcross on 16th December 1895, two days after her reported death. The certificate led me to directly research the local and regional press in the Devon Heritage Centre as a result of my discovery. I had known that Susanna had been blind since 1877 as a note had been recorded in the in the 1881 Census in the column for disabilities that she had been ‘Blind 4 years’. But I was still surprised to read that she had what the Deputy Coroner described as an ‘Accidental Death’ caused because she had fallen down the stairs of the family home at No. 9 New Road and had broken her neck. 

Reports of the Inquest and the incident appeared in a number of newspapers under the heading ‘Fatal Accident At Starcross’ in the week following including The Dawlish Times, The Evening Post and The Devon & Exeter Gazette’. The reports provided me with additional information by referring and naming some of Susanna’s surviving children and a few personal details relating to where they lived and their occupations. One report described the surgeon who attended as saying there were no ‘marks of violence and he attributed death to shock, the result of the fall’ despite the fact other reports they say that she broke her neck. 

I hope this gives a simple example of the benefits of getting that civil registration certificate, as I said it can offer up unexpected gold in terms of the family history that it may open up and as a potential signpost to finding out even more! 

[The colourised photograph, above,.. . is probably taken in the early 1890s which I believe to be of Susanna Barratt [centre] with her eldest daughter, also Susanna [on the left] and her other daughter, Elizabeth [my own Great Grandmother] to the right. What I find remarkable is that I can look into the eyes of an image of my direct ancestor whose birth was more than 200 years ago in 1816]. 

Les Gibbings