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Beginners => Family History Beginners Board => Topic started by: djmontgomery on Thursday 15 May 14 12:55 BST (UK)
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hello everyone
I'm new to this forum so please bear with me.
I have recently begun a new project with the Church of England to make better use of the Church's vast archives of historical records. As you're probably aware, each parish generally owns and keeps its own records which of course makes life a bit challenging for genealogical research. What we're trying to do is to begin centralizing a process for getting parish records online and searchable, with a church goal of reconnecting people with their communities and historic family churches.
Anyhow - what I'm doing at the moment is identifying 'pilot' parishes and deaneries we could work with as we begin the project.
To that end, I thought I would simply throw a line out on this forum. If you are into this whole subject of genealogy and particularly the history of your local parish records, I'd love to hear from you. Particularly if you are in Winchester, Chichester, London or Guildford dioceses. But really anywhere in the country would be good to hear from.
Feel free to PM me to connect or ask me anything more.
Best wishes to all,
Darren M
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Hi Darren
Welcome to Rootschat ;D
With regards to London & most probably Guildford, you'll find that Ancestry & FindmyPast have already put a vast amount of information online and are continuing to work on other things.
The registers deposited for safe-keeping at the London Metropolitan Archives are on Ancestry
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/group/london_met_archives
The registers deposited for safe-keeping at the City of Westminster Archives are on FindMyPast
http://www.findmypast.co.uk/articles/world-records/search-all-uk-records/special-collections/the-westminster-collection
and the registers deposited at the Surrey History Centre are also online at Ancestry
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/CardCatalog.aspx#ccat=hc=25&dbSort=1&sbo=1&title=surrey&keyword=&
Dawn
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thanks Dawn :)
Yes I know those companies have been piecing together parish records as you describe. It's a bit of a piecemeal effort so far, though they've certainly put some big archives online.
However, there is still a huge untapped quantity in churches round the country. I'm in contact with FindMyPast and soon Ancestry about our work, hope ultimately to partner with a company like that and gradually build a much more comprehensive centralized resource by defining the process for local parishes to get their records online. Might take some time but we'd like to get there so the whole church and community can benefit :)
cheers
Darren
Special Project Director, CofE (Busbridge & Hambledon)
Hi Darren
Welcome to Rootschat ;D
With regards to London & most probably Guildford, you'll find that Ancestry & FindmyPast have already put a vast amount of information online and are continuing to work on other things.
The registers deposited for safe-keeping at the London Metropolitan Archives are on Ancestry
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/group/london_met_archives
The registers deposited for safe-keeping at the City of Westminster Archives are on FindMyPast
http://www.findmypast.co.uk/articles/world-records/search-all-uk-records/special-collections/the-westminster-collection
and the registers deposited at the Surrey History Centre are also online at Ancestry
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/CardCatalog.aspx#ccat=hc=25&dbSort=1&sbo=1&title=surrey&keyword=&
Dawn
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Hello Darren,
I am fairly new to researching my family and would be absolutely lost without parish registers. They are invaluable in unsnarling people with the same name....happens a lot in my family and following the women in my tree. I also often find little notes that didn't make it to the indexes or official documents that solve a problem or at least give me another clue.....and when I find a register online that I can view the actual document and see the handwriting of my ancestor from 200 years ago, well that is thrilling. It helps make an emotional connection with that person to me and that is really what this is all about for all of us.
I applaud your efforts and encourage you to get going!
Dee
Portland, OR, USA
P.S. My family research is centered in Cambridgeshire and I buy my registers from parishchest.com
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Hi Darren
Out of interest is this a project originating from the C of E or did you approach them about it? The reason I ask is you say that each parish generally owns and keeps its own records but the majority of records (apart from ones still in use) are deposited in various County/Diocese Archives and it is usually these Archives that enter into discussions with or are approached by online websites. Have you contacted the various Diocese Archives?
Andy
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Is this you? http://www.bhcgodalming.org/the-history-project/
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My understanding is that Parish Records are deposited at various County Archives who by & large have contracts with one or other of the big online Genealogy Co's & as the records are owned by the C of E they would have to be co-partners so I'm not sure how the C of E go about releasing the whole collection to a third party for digitalization for online access without being in breach of contract.
Maybe you can give us your thoughts on that.
jim
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Staffordshire archives are in process of some of their registers digitised , not sure but I think it's find my past. Certain registers are not being done such as non conformist I do know but I think some of the c of e ones are n't also.
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;D Those of us with Sussex (Chichester Diocese) ancestors are incredibly fortunate to have the Sussex Family History Group http://www.sfhg.org.uk (http://www.sfhg.org.uk) which has already made available to members online many (most) of the parish registers that have been deposited at WSRO or ESRO.
Liz
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Hi Darren
This sounds to be a very interesting and useful project. There are two parishes in Somerset/Devon which have done their own transcribing of their parish records and have put them on their local websites:
http://www.winshamwebmuseum.co.uk/ (http://www.winshamwebmuseum.co.uk/)
http://www.chardstockwebmuseum.org/ (http://www.chardstockwebmuseum.org/)
and I'm sure there are many more. There is also all the wonderful work done by those at FreeREG
http://www.freereg.org.uk/ (http://www.freereg.org.uk/)
but I am not sure of the relationship between these groups and organisations and the genealogy companies. It would be good if your pilot parishes could be those who have not transcribed their records for whatever reason, I imagine there are quite a few! I think it is important that your project avoids duplicating anything that is already out there. What would be really useful is a collation of exactly what records are available on line already.
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hi
yes indeed, that is me :)
Is this you? http://www.bhcgodalming.org/the-history-project/
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hi there
This is originating from the CofE, I work there as Special Project Director leading this initiative. I'm very much still building my understanding at this point, but the idea would be to establish a standard simpler way for the church to deal with their records. You're totally right of course that many records are held in county archives, but ultimately they're still actually owned by each individual parish so commercial partnerships ideally should take that into account. Of course it's good if the records get online however it happens, but we feel the church could manage all this a bit more efficiently for the good of both the public researchers and the church itself.
That's the puzzle I'm trying to figure out :)
cheers
Darren
Hi Darren
Out of interest is this a project originating from the C of E or did you approach them about it? The reason I ask is you say that each parish generally owns and keeps its own records but the majority of records (apart from ones still in use) are deposited in various County/Diocese Archives and it is usually these Archives that enter into discussions with or are approached by online websites. Have you contacted the various Diocese Archives?
Andy
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That's a good point, thank you.
Yes we'd certainly like to start with places that are not online already - makes sense.
cheers
Hi Darren
This sounds to be a very interesting and useful project. There are two parishes in Somerset/Devon which have done their own transcribing of their parish records and have put them on their local websites:
http://www.winshamwebmuseum.co.uk/ (http://www.winshamwebmuseum.co.uk/)
http://www.chardstockwebmuseum.org/ (http://www.chardstockwebmuseum.org/)
and I'm sure there are many more. There is also all the wonderful work done by those at FreeREG
http://www.freereg.org.uk/ (http://www.freereg.org.uk/)
but I am not sure of the relationship between these groups and organisations and the genealogy companies. It would be good if your pilot parishes could be those who have not transcribed their records for whatever reason, I imagine there are quite a few! I think it is important that your project avoids duplicating anything that is already out there. What would be really useful is a collation of exactly what records are available on line already.
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yes, that's correct in many cases. Ultimately each parish does own its own records, so one thing I'm doing is trying to figure out how those contracts work. Our goal is to improve it all a bit with some central standardization on the church side, how we do that is TBC :)
cheers
My understanding is that Parish Records are deposited at various County Archives who by & large have contracts with one or other of the big online Genealogy Co's & as the records are owned by the C of E they would have to be co-partners so I'm not sure how the C of E go about releasing the whole collection to a third party for digitalization for online access without being in breach of contract.
Maybe you can give us your thoughts on that.
jim
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The other question is, when do you stop.
The Data Protection Act will only allow records up to a certain date to go into the public domain.
After digitalisation has been completed you then have all of those records that are now outside of the Act while this is taking place that will also have to be digitalised & so it goes on ad infinitum.
So are you looking at a fixed term or a lifetime project?
jim
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I am amazed that the CofE are finally seeing the potential here - May we ask is this project going to be free access or a pay per view one. May OPC projects around the country are adding parish record transcripts to their sites for free. Lancashire, Cornwall and Devon spring to mind as those probably most complete. The Wiltshire site is a work in progress. Family search.org also have the records online for free. In the past when individual churches have been contacted about the records they still hold they have been reluctant to allow anyone to transcribe as they claim this is a source of income for the church itself. What must be remembered that transcribed records are all well and good but can only ever be as accurate at the transcriber/checker. The only true records would be images of the originals and this has not been acceptable by the various Diocese or County Record Offices as these records are also a source of income for the archives to enhance their funding to preserve other antique and historical documents deposited from other sources than the various churches in their county.