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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: treehunt on Wednesday 17 August 22 20:50 BST (UK)
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I use FindMyPast to search for records and lately I've been getting a lot of records which I can't figure out where the information is actually coming from.
For instance, I found a baptism record that seems to have useful information on it. It's in the "England Births & Baptisms 1538-1975, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England" record set. At the bottom of the record it states "Index (c) IRI. Used by permission of FamilySearch Intl". The record itself doesn't have a location, page number, reference number, or anything of the kind.
If I go to FamilySearch and try to search their records I generally can't find the records on their website. Sometimes I've found the record but FamilySearch say they got it from FindMyPast and FindMyPast says they got it from FamilySearch. I understand these two entities have agreements with each other but it doesn't help me understand where the information ACTUALLY comes from! Someone must have transcribed it from somewhere at some point ...
Given the inaccuracies rife on FamilySearch I'm a little wary to just take it at face value and enter it into my family tree. Can anyone enlighten me as to what's going on?
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It would be helpful of you could give a specific record, then we can see what is happening.
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Welcome to Rootschat :D
It is more than likely that the origin of these records will be the relevant records office for the county.
So what usually happens is that an organisation approaches a Record Office and requests permission to film/photograph their baptism, marriage and burial records and any other records in which they are interested. They then put these records on their website so that researchers can look them up without going to the Record Office itself. This can be helpful for those who are not able to travel to the Record Office for whatever reason.
Quite often these records are then taken up by other genealogy websites.
Does that make sense to you?
No doubt if I am wrong someone will be along to correct me. :)
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Since it's a baptism the source will be either an Anglican parish register or bishop's transcript, unless you're really unlucky and it's from a nonconformist place of worship. So I suggest entering the same query into FreeReg (https://www.freereg.org.uk/) and assuming they've transcribed the relevant parish, see what source they give.
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I suspect, without any proof, that some of the records on FindMyPast which show as coming from Familysearch may have been taken from Bishops/Archdeacons transcripts in archives. I have noticed that they sometimes have records, not always complete or reliable, which are not available otherwise.
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England Births & Baptisms 1538-1975 are a country wide collection entirely separate from their Warwickshire Collection https://www.findmypast.co.uk/search/historical-records?region=england&keywords=warwickshire&page=1&order_direction=desc&order_by=relevance per parish coverage list here https://www.findmypast.co.uk/articles/warwickshire-place-list
The England Births & Baptisms are an older index only collection sourced from Familysearch https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1473014 and also used and available on Ancestry as "England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975" https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/9841/
It is explained by Familysearch here https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/England_Births_and_Christenings_-_FamilySearch_Historical_Records which in turn contains a link explaining IGI where you will note it is a Legacy Collection and that they split the transcripts of Indexed Historical Records (Community Indexed IGI) & the user submitted info but it does have in bold type on both "As this is an index of records compiled from various sources, it is strongly recommended that you verify any information you find with original records."
They are likely transcripts from the registers but may not be done by someone familiar with local names and placenames [same applies to Ancestry & FindMyPast] so verify with the scanned images & use the Parish transcripts done by the local Societies in the Warwickshire collection if possible.
or Familysearches England, Warwickshire, Parish Registers, 1535-1963 from the Record Office https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1462403 and microfilm https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/1462403
You can always do name/ place searches on Ancestry's too in case they have something additional without a sub https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/2446/
The border with Worcestershire & Gloucestershire changed - there were many detached parts of Worcestershire in the surrounding counties, and conversely there were islands of other counties within Worcestershire. The 1844 Counties (Detached Parts) Act began the process of eliminating these.
Edit - I now note they have combined them per the info on the pages
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Thanks everyone!
Jon_ni, thank you! That's exactly what I was looking for. Wasn't quite sure where to find the info so your links are very useful. All the ones I'm finding don't have images so it's difficult to verify transcriptions but now I know where to go if I want to look it up myself.
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I understand these two entities have agreements with each other but it doesn't help me understand where the information ACTUALLY comes from! Someone must have transcribed it from somewhere at some point ...
Given the inaccuracies rife on FamilySearch I'm a little wary to just take it at face value and enter it into my family tree. Can anyone enlighten me as to what's going on?
As a rule of thumb never use a transcript of any record (yes, that even includes Bishop's Transcripts) as a reliable source, at best they are a finding aid that such a record may exist.
In addition look for as much other evidence as possible that the record is accurate, not just two or three other sources but as many as you can find.
Cheers
Guy