Case Study: Searching for the records of James William Sudder

Case Study: Searching for the records of James William Sudder.

Family legend, told to me by my mother, was that James, an accomplished sailor, had been killed in the First World War when his ship had been hit by enemy fire. I was interested in him as he was the father of my Great Grandfather who had had to leave school to support his mother and sisters and it changed the course of my family’s history forever.

As I don’t live in the same part of the country that my ancestors came from, I knew that I would have to do all my research on the internet.

I knew that my Great Grandfather had died in Nottinghamshire in approximately 1985. I logged onto and searched their Death records for England 1984-2004. Ancestry I found my Great Grandfather’s death registration which gave me his date of birth as given at the of his death.

>need screen print in here as the link makes the page too wide ...

Using the approximate year of birth of 1909 I searched [www.freebmd.org.uk FreeBMD] a site transcribed by volunteers that is not complete but free to search. This gave me the reference to order his birth certificate:

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl - screen print in here.

I ordered his birth certificate from the [www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content General Register Office for England and Wales] website. The copy of his birth certificate was then sent directly to my house which gave details of his parents:

James William Sudder and Esther Ewles.

I searched www.ancestry.co.uk partial transcribed England and Wales Index for marriages to see if I could find the reference for the marriage as this facility is free to search. This gave me the reference for the marriage and confirmed it as correct as James William Sudder was on the same page as Esther Ewles, neither of which are very common names.

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I ordered the marriage certificate from [www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content General Register Office for England and Wales] as the reference number does not correspond to the records held by the local Register Office.

The marriage certificate gave me the ages of the Bride and Groom, their occupations, address, names of their fathers and their fathers’ occupations. It also gave me their ages. This then gave me an approximate year of birth for James William Sudder senior.