Quick tip – Check the margins of a record

If you consult an original record, make sure to check the margins for any notes. For example, the margins of a birth record may tell you that an illegitimate child was later acknowledged by a man who married the mother.

Birth record with note in the margin

Birth record of Maria Verstraete, with a note in the margin showing that she was acknowledged by Jan Gommeren as his child. 

The margins may also contain corrections of the main text, for example if an error was made. These corrections can be made at the time of creation, but can also be ordered by the court many years later, for example if a mistake in the gender or name of a child was only discovered when a bride-to-be got an extract of her birth record and discovered she was legally registered as a male.

About Yvette Hoitink

Yvette Hoitink, CG®, QG™ is a professional genealogist in the Netherlands. She holds the Certified Genealogist credential from the Board for Certification of Genealogists and has a post-graduate diploma in Family and Local History from the University of Dundee. She has been doing genealogy for over 30 years and helps people from across the world find their ancestors in the Netherlands. Read about Yvette's professional genealogy services.

Comments

  1. Great advice, as always. To give you an example from Australia… divorce details are often in the marginal notes of marriage certificates ordered from a Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Those details make it much easier to find Supreme Court divorce files in State Archives.

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