Improved Searches for Births Deaths and Marriages (Queensland)

The Queensland Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages has today (16 October 2013) released an improved version of its search engine. Features include:

• It is no longer necessary to enter information in the 'Last name' field. You can leave that blank and just enter the person's first name, the first name of their father or mother, or any combination of these. You can also use the wildcard feature on all of these search fields.
• Mother's maiden surname is once again shown in results for death index searches. (This wasn't mentioned in the press release, but I was pleased to see it. We've been waiting a while for that to be fixed - see 'Maiden Names missing from Qld death indexes online'.)

In the field labelled 'Mother's first name', you can enter the first name plus surname to narrow down the results, but beware of spelling variants.

Now that you can omit the surname:

1. Enter 'father's name + mother's name' to find deaths of daughters whose married surname you do not know.
2. That technique may also find:
   • previously unknown siblings
   • events registered under weird spelling variants.
3. Enter 'mother's name' only to find illegitimate births.

You will find that some illegitimate births are registered under multiple surnames. In this example the birth is registered under DREW, DENMAN and SOLWAY.

Some illegitimate births are registered under multiple surnames

My main Web site has an index and advice for family historians who are trying to identify the father of an illegitimate child. I have also created a mini-guide, Researching Illegitimate Children.

Did you know that Victorian birth, death & marriage indexes are now on FindMyPast?