Essex Record Office collaboration with Ancestry

[Trevor Rix]

I followed up this issue with the ERO ...

"For many records in these new Essex indexes on Ancestry, the parish and
date are not shown when clicking View Record.

If I click "View Record at Essex Archives Online", then "Open website" I
can see the parish and the dataset reference, but not any indication of
the year of the record. So, if I go looking for the image using my SEAX
subscription, I have to browse though all of the images in that dataset.

What is the resolution to this issue please?"

And received their reply this morning ...

"We have no control over Ancestry's indexes, but we queried this point last week.  They say that these entries in the baptism index - relating to the parents of those baptised - should not appear there and they are working to remove them."

[coombs]

Some brickwalls have come crashing down into dust. But on the flip side I have found more "possibles" for ancestors with more common names such as Moss, May and French.

I am still investigating the strong possibility of a West Ham marriage in 1769 being my ancestor's marriage. They ended up in Brentwood then Rochford.

[StevieSteve]

Thanks for the notification, Trevor, think this is going to be very useful.

To get rid of the name, father, mother entries (which are referencing the parent rather than the child), simply type Baptism in the Event Type search field and you only get the references to the child complete with date and parish

Type Burial or Marriage to restrict the list to those records

[sharonmx5]

This will be very useful for me as I have RSI and combing the SEAX parish records with no index has caused me a lot of pain in the past.  Worth getting another subscription now.

[farmeroman]

This is proving to be a very useful resource, but with some limitations:

Whilst I have had a fair amount of success in finding additional children and burials for some early ancestors and a significant number of modern (post 1837) baptisms, marriages and burials in large registration districts (e.g. Romford), which made gradually sorting through all of the distict's parish records very time consuming, I have unfortunately had only very limited success in breaking through long standing brick walls, specifically early baptisms and marriages. This could either mean that those ancestors were not baptised and/or married in Essex or that the indexing project is incomplete; some records may of course be damaged or missing too. On the bright side it also means that my >10 years of painstaking research both at the ERO and online was pretty accurate and I (probably) haven’t missed much.

I'm pretty confident that I'll easily be able to get everything I need with just one month Ancestry and ERO subscriptions and I'll then be pretty confident that Essex is done. For now...

[Trevor Rix]

Don't forget that non-conformist register images are not on SEAX.

Many are on Ancestry though.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/uknonconformistvitals/

[coombs]

Also common or commoner names have thrown up several candidates. My ancestor Hannah Reed was born c1758 but there are 4 or 5 Hannah Reed's to choose from born c1755-1762. Witnesses to her marriage seem to be from the grooms side. As we all know, it gets harder the further you go back, unless they were well off and left wills or were from gentry, royalty.

I have managed to break down several brickwalls. It has certainly made Essex research a lot, lot easier.

[clairec666]

The latest Lostcousins newsletter has an article about getting to the image from Ancestry's transcription. It's a bit long-winded, but may be of use to some of you:
https://www.lostcousins.com/newsletters2/endjun19news.htm#EssexTip

[coombs]

Good tip thanks.

I can understand the bloggers frustration of trawling through many unindexed parish records for Essex. These indexes do give you a lift up past the census and civil reg era. I have spent many years trawling through unindexed parish registers on SEAX and in the record offices. Genealogy is so big that the demand for records to come online has never been higher.

My ancestor was Mary Cromsel/Cromful who wed John Kellock in Cressing in 1779. A Hannah Cromful wed in 1784 and one of the witnesses was John Kellock. Cromful seems to be a variation of Cromfield. A Hannah and Mary Cromfield were baptised in 1751 and 1756 respectively in Belchamp, so they are under investigation.