Using GRONI

Since March 2014, the General Register Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI) has offered an online search facility for anyone wishing to obtain records for:

• Births dated over 100 years ago until 1864.
• Marriages dated over 75 years ago until 1845.
• Deaths dated over 50 years ago until 1864.

Prior to this online search facility being made available, everyone had to book a slot in the GRONI Search Room and then venture down to the Chichester Street office for a specific time-slot.

I first went to the office in April 2013, just as I was getting into my own family research. I paid the £35 fee for a 1-hour Assisted Search from a member of staff. This consisted of sitting on opposite sides of a desk with a desktop between us. I read out the names and dates for what/who I was researching, and the staff member proceeded to pull up the records.

The staff member was very helpful, I was able to find what I was looking for, and I also learned for the first time how records can be listed under different spellings.

But still, it was £35 for 1 hour and I had only gotten through a fraction of the records that I wanted to look up. To apply for certificates online cost £15 for each one. This was far too steep a price for me to make use of the service on a regular basis, therefore, when the online search facility was announced, I was absolutely buzzing with excitement, and I am happy to say that 18 months on, it has become a resource that I could not imagine living without.

GRONI Search Facility - Home Page

It is free to join, and as long as you have 1 credit in your account (£0.40) you can browse endless search results (5 credits/£2.00 lets you view a full certificate.)

Still, there are some glitches to be found and some stumbling blocks to be experienced if you are unfamiliar with the practice of looking up records.

Often, this happens with the further back you are going or the less information you have.

See, GRONI asks for a surname to carry out every single search - and "back in the day" most surnames were recorded phonetically (how they sounded.) That is how Mulhern becomes Mulhearn and Connolly becomes Connelly.

So if you are ever carrying out a search for an event whose date you are absolutely certain of, try clicking the 'Equals' option and changing it to 'Begins with.' With this option, you only have to enter the first three letters of the surname. So, if your ancestor was named Mulhern but possibly recorded as Mulhearn, then "Mul" will give you all options for both. Nine times out of ten, you will find that allowing for this spelling variant gives you the record you are looking for.

Another factor to contend with is the registration districts. Put it down to my relatively scarce knowledge of Northern Irish geography outside of Central Belfast, but I initially found it overwhelming to contend with the 28 districts and the 200+ sub-districts that cover this area.

Copyright: Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency

So, for any of you from further afield do not be put off by the registration districts. There is an invaluable online resource for clearing them up (click here.) It breaks down the districts into street names and neighbourhoods, facts that are more likely to trickle down through family stories than "Rural 14."

Another issue to contend with is that people in the past were not always honest about their names on records. I encountered one such case when a friend asked me to get her paternal grandparents' marriage certificate. She knew their names, their anniversary, and even the church, so I assured her that using GRONI's online search facility, I would have the certificate for her before the end of her smoke break.

Not so fast.

Since GRONI only asks for either the bride or groom's surname, I entered her grandfather's surname first. The list of results would give his wife's surname, so my thinking was that I could use that to pick out the correct record.

GRONI Search Facility - Marriage Index Page

Except, his name wasn't turning up anything. So, as per my earlier advice, I changed the spelling.

Nothing.

Then I did the "Begins with" trick and entered only the first 3 letters.

Not a thing.

Growing perplexed, I entered the rarely-seen "Not Captured" into the Surname field. See, from time to time, handwriting was so obscure that the record is actually stored under "Not Captured" as opposed to the actual surname.

But still nothing.

At my wit's end, I searched instead by the bride's name, and this at the very least gave me some search results.

But not the one I was looking for.

I didn't know what else to do. I was even about to suggest to my friend that her grandparents were never legally married!

This is a common trope in family research: we want our stories to be so extravagant and fantastical that we often overlook the Occam's Razor principle: the simpler, more logical explanation is often the correct one.

Copyright: Working Analytics

So, I went back to what else I knew about this couple, specifically the groom.

I knew his mother had died when he was very young and that his father had remarried several times since (a story for another time.) So sorry did I feel for this young boy who had lost his mother that her surname (maiden name)  somehow became lodged in my head.

I guess her maiden name had lodged more firmly in my mind than I had realised, because the next time I searched for the marriage record by the bride's name and looked down the list of corresponding groom surnames, there I saw it.

The groom's mother's maiden name in place of his surname.

I purchased the record, opened it, and wouldn't you know that there, in literal black-and-white, his name was written, and underneath it, "otherwise [father's surname.]"

Redacted copy of said certificate

Alas, while his father's surname WAS on the record as a footnote, the GRONI search facility works in such a way that it only records the primary surname on the record. I could not really fault GRONI for this, as I can't imagine too many people list multiple surnames when signing a marriage register.

Aside from the giant coup I felt at landing this record, it also opened up a whole new avenue of research into this individual ("Did he sever ties with his father, torn up by grief over his mother and sickened at his father's remarriages?")

Again, I let my imagination run wild with possibilities, but whether correct or not, therein lies the fun of filling in the blanks for the details that records are unable to tell you.

And so, there you have just a few of my experiences with GRONI.

Having dipped my research toe into other countries, I know that not many places are lucky to have instant, online access the way that we do with GRONI, nor are they able to obtain certificates on their screens for just £2 that date back to 1845. And with the recent launch of free, digitised Catholic Parish Registers, the National Library of Ireland (NLI) is able to take you back even further on your trail - an incredible development for those of you not able to visit parish church records in person.

NLI Catholic Parish Registers - Search Page

A downside to the new NLI website is that it cannot be searched by names; only by counties and parishes. However, I will talk more about using this service another time.

So, if you are new to using the GRONI search facility, or have been having some of the struggles that I have encountered, then hopefully this post has been of some use to you.

If you are still stuck, then get in touch and I'll try to help.

No promises, though.

Sometimes, some people just want to stay hidden.