Suffolk parish registers to go online?

[findem]

It's such a shame there is this long delay in digitizing the Suffolk PRs, the Suffolk Records Office could be earning some useful funds.

There is a rumour that Ancestry used Indian transcribers to get the Ancestry Essex Parish Register Index (EPRI) up and running, I don't know how true that is but the way some names have been transcribed it could well be true, some very mangled names.  If it is true then I hope they give the job to someone who has knowledge of British names and if Family Search will do the job for free, why not.

Having said that I am very grateful for having the online EPRI, it has helped me tremendously,mind you it has made me use my imagination to it's very limits.   

So please Suffolk Records Office do something, I have only one Suffolk line so I don't have a great deal to gain myself but there must be hundreds, probably more like thousands, of people just dying to have the digital PRs etc online.

[Trevor Rix]

Ancestry, and probably Findmypast, have indeed been using specialist transcription services overseas including India for a long time - maybe a decade or more.

It is well known that many transcriptions are inaccurate, but are much better than nothing. Apart from the volunteers that index FamilySearch images, there is no other method to index the huge quantities of parish registers that have been made available to us online in a reasonable timeframe.

When searching on Ancestry in most cases it is best to search specific datasets that may be identified by use of the Card Catalogue, rather than a global search. Select "Match all terms exactly", make good use of wildcards, and use the Keywords box when including places in searches. View search results by Category as well as the default by Records. Using those methods one does not become overwhelmed with results that are not relevant.

Regarding the indexing of Suffolk parish registers, the best set are those on Findmypast transcribed by Suffolk Family History Society, supplemented by those on FreeReg.

The loss of income to Suffolk Record Office/Suffolk County Council through not digitising parish registers must be significant by now, maybe 6 or 7 figures.

Come on Suffolk - catch up with the majority of the rest of England, Wales and Scotland.

[coombs]

I have many, many Suffolk ancestors. About 40% of my Essex ancestors have ancestors before them who came from Suffolk. Seemed to be a huge influx of Suffokers to SE Essex such as Rochford, Foulness and Southend etc.

Even if Suffolk just digitised the records and did not index them then I would be happy, as I would immediately pay a sub to view the scans online, the way they do with SEAX. Any images on FamilySearch seem to be only accessible at FHS centre or to LDS members.

[findem]

Hi coombs,

I'm pretty fortunate that I only have so far two Suffolk lines, Robert Fewell and his wife Marie Boughtell, they married 20 April 1581 at Withersfield, Suffolk, I haven't been able to find Robert and Marie's birth or baptism simply because I have limited access to Suffolk PRs.

I had better luck with their son Giles who was baptised 12 Mar 1581 at Withersfield, he married Elizabetha Trueman in 1603 at Thaxted, in the Thaxted PRs his name was in Latin as Aegidis which I didn't associate with Giles until as a "just in case" I looked it up.  Funnily enough I couldn't find any siblings of Giles.

I and others researching the Fewells in Essex were advised of the Suffolk connection by the son of the deceased Rev Mills, some of the Essex details were not quite correct but the Suffolk connection was.

I also have one line from Yorkshire, one from Norfolk and one from Hertfordshire, there have been a couple of times when I thought my research was heading into Cambridgeshire but then they did a U turn.

Noting your mention of new Suffolk records in FreeReg I'll try again for siblings of Giles and his parents baptisms, you never know your luck.

Btw I also have Cornwell/Cornwall about 1670, Kelvedon so far and Lawrence early 1700s in Coggeshall.

[Trevor Rix]

I too would be happy to pay a subscription to view and download images of the original Suffolk parish registers like we can do for Essex on SEAX essexarchivesonline.co.uk .

Even better would be for the images to be on Ancestry or Findmypast to view/download via my existing subscriptions.

Or allow FamilySearch to digitise and make available online for free.

But all of the brief information coming from Suffolk Record Office/Suffolk County Council is that they want to charge on a pay per view/download basis like they do already for original Suffolk wills that are digitised. But each will costs £6 which is not affordable if you want several. Wills ordered from the GRO are only £1.50 each. Downloads including wills from the Public Record Office are free at the moment.

Imagine £6 for every Suffolk parish register page!!!

I have several times given them feedback that pay per view is not viable. Subscription models are the way to go. But so far they are not listening.

[coombs]

A simple pay as you go basis and nothing else is not viable I agree. Say if you wanted to do a multiple page search for one parish, take Burgate near Thetford for example, and having to pay £6 to view one page when you have about 40 or so pages to rifle through. It is a rip off. If that is to be the case, I;d rather just wait for more Suffolk parishes to be transcribed in full on FreeREG or wait until the Suffolk record offices are open and arrange some more visits to Lowestoft RO.

The beauty of SEAX is when you have a sub, it means unlimited access to registers and wills.

FindMyPast does have Boyd's Marriage Index for Suffolk which can be very helpful as East Anglia is well covered.

[Trevor Rix]

From: Paul West (SCC Councillor) <Paul.West@suffolk.gov.uk>
Sent: 16 November 2020 10:05
To: Richard Kemp (SCC Councillor) <richard.kemp@suffolk.gov.uk>
Subject: Re: Digitising Suffolk parish registers

Good Morning Richard

Apologies for the delay on this. Had been waiting for a detailed reply from officers.

Would now comment as follows:

The county situation regarding the digitisation of Suffolk’s Parish Registers is not as straight forward as would first appear.  For the majority of English counties the main series of online images of pages in baptism, marriage and burial registers available for research through FamilySearch and commercial services such as Ancestry, FindMyPast and MyHeritage consist of poor quality black and white digital images made from microfilm originally produced by the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-Day Saints.  (FamilySearch is a not-for-profit organisation sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints.) This coverage of black and white digital images is often patchy and/or incomplete.  In many instances researchers do not have access to the images only transcripts or indexes of them.

FamilySearch is keen to be involved in parish digitisation projects offering to do the work for free provided their worldwide members and family history libraries are given free access to the images.  Many projects have involved a partnership between FamilySearch who do the digitisation for free and Ancestry, FindMyPast or MyHeritage who put the images up on their website for their subscribers to download, the record office service receiving a royalty fee based on the downloads/views.  Unfortunately some early projects resulted in some record office services not obtaining as good a deal as was hoped.

More recent county archive service projects are endeavouring to improve the situation by the creation of new full colour high quality images that replace the black and white ones, are a complete set and come more up to date.  This is what we wish to do in Suffolk.  We see this as an extremely important source of income for the long-term sustainability of the Suffolk Archive Service, as well making the collections more accessible, and helping to preserve the originals, which we only have one opportunity to get right.  Most income is made in the first few years of the project (whenever the start point of the project occurs). We have carried out our research and learnt from other record office services,and will be in a position to pick up this extensive project once the Suffolk Archive Service has completed its move into The Hold.

The priority in the last few years has been to deliver The Hold project countywide.  I should also point out that several other county archive services that have had a major building project are also further behind e.g. Cambridgeshire Archives (Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire parish registers), Cumbria Archives (Cumberland and Westmorland parish registers), Herefordshire Archives and Records Centre, Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology Service. Some other counties with a poorer coverage of online images appear to be Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Durham and Nottinghamshire.  Our neighbouring county of Essex has images online but it took them about 15 years to do in-house, which is why it is important for Suffolk to negotiate a good deal with a commercial partner.  The Yorkshire Digitisation Consortium comprising the East Riding Archives and Local Studies Service, the Borthwick Institute for Archives (University of York), the North Yorkshire County Record Office, Teesside Archives, Sheffield Archives and Local Studies, and Doncaster Archives and Local Studies has been working with FindMyPast to digitise their parish registers since 2013 and their project is just nearing completion indicating that other large counties have found it a challenge.

Hopefully we will be able to make progress in the next year as the delivery of The Hold project is almost complete.

Kind regards

Paul West
County Councillor for Bixley Division &
Cabinet Member for Ipswich, Communities and Waste
Suffolk County Council

[coombs]

A glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel while we wait for digitisation of the records is, Suffolk FHS have made their transcription CD's downloadable, and I just bought the Suffolk Burial Index CD Volume 3 and the Loes and Orford deaneries Baptisms indexes. This means you can download them after buying them and get instant access and not have to wait for delivery.

[BenRalph]

A glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel while we wait for digitisation of the records is, Suffolk FHS have made their transcription CD's downloadable, and I just bought the Suffolk Burial Index CD Volume 3 and the Loes and Orford deaneries Baptisms indexes. This means you can download them after buying them and get instant access and not have to wait for delivery.

Do these CDs have stuff on that isn't available so far on Ancestry and/or FindMyPast?