Butley Parish Registers

[Lewis21]

Hi all,

I have been making some great progress with the new registers on Ancestry however I've hit a stumbling block with the Butley registers.

FindMyPast's index has Honour Cook and Hannah Cook baptised at Butley in 1765 and 1773 respectively, to William and Sarah Cook. However on reviewing the originals on Ancestry neither baptism is there.

Does this mean the Ancestry volume is incomplete, or have FindMyPast got the parish completely wrong? Both sisters later married in Butley so I do think they are from there.

I also noticed Ancestry doesn't have a volume for Butley for the period 1786-1812. I wonder why this is, can anyone shed any light on it?

Thanks!

Lewis

Edit: The marriage register book from 1754-1791 is also apparently absent unless I've somehow missed it.

[smudwhisk]

It would appear that the register that Ancestry have as Butley is actually Wissett, confirmed by a test search of an entry in the Ancestry image with the Suffolk FHS entries on FindMyPast.   A page at the beginning of the register is difficult to read but does appear to say Wissett.

It would probably be worth flagging this to Suffolk Archive's attention rather than Ancestry, they hopefully will be able to get it fixed assuming the Butley register has been digitised.

The same images with what appears to be the same index are also correctly listed as Wissett.

[smudwhisk]

According to the Suffolk Archivist at the FHS AGM presentation last year, all the images etc were being triple checked to ensure accuracy.  Well something has gone amiss with Butley.

[Lewis21]

It would appear that the register that Ancestry have as Butley is actually Wissett, confirmed by a test search of an entry in the Ancestry image with the Suffolk FHS entries on FindMyPast.   A page at the beginning of the register is difficult to read but does appear to say Wissett.

It would probably be worth flagging this to Suffolk Archive's attention rather than Ancestry, they hopefully will be able to get it fixed assuming the Butley register has been digitised.

The same images with what appears to be the same index are also correctly listed as Wissett.

Thanks very much for this - I never thought to check whether the images were actually for the correct parish! Makes a lot of sense as to why nothing was matching.

I will contact Suffolk Archives and see what they say. It is odd that their catalogue only seems to show deposited registers dating from 1785 (still missing on Ancestry anyway). As for earlier volumes it isn't clear; I do hope they haven't been lost.

FindMyPast must have got their transcriptions (back to 1760s) from somewhere. Hopefully all will become clear soon.

Lewis

[rosie99]

FindMyPast must have got their transcriptions (back to 1760s) from somewhere. Hopefully all will become clear soon.

According to FindMyPast's website on the record for Honour the information was from Suffolk Family History Society

[Lewis21]

I had a response from Suffolk Archives on the issue with the Butley registers.

They are aware of the problem and have raised it with Ancestry. Once resolved we should be able to see the registers they have for Butley, which do indeed only date from 1785 for baptism/burial and 1792 for marriages (the latter are already viewable).

Although it was not explicitly stated in their response, from what I can find out it seems that the original PRs for Butley prior to 1785 do not exist. I have looked extensively online and checked Phillimore and they all list a start date of 1785.

The FindMyPast transcriptions must have come from the BTs. Suffolk Archives advised these have been digitised too and they plan to add them to the collection, but they do not have a live date yet.

The BTs for Butley (based on TNA entry) cover 1692-1698, 1705, 1708, 1716, 1718, 1723-1725 1727-1729, 1731, 1733-1736, 1738-1747, 1749-1752, 1754-1771 (and presumably some later ones too). Not ideal but hopefully I will still be able to make some further progress despite the multiple gaps.

Reminds me of when I discovered, some years ago now, that the registers for Monkwearmouth in Durham had gone up in flames in the rector's house in 1790, leaving virtually nothing behind except patchy BT coverage. Kind of galling to know all this information once existed and now it's just gone!