As I am working through the earliest parish register to transcribe births marriages and deaths it occurred to me that although microfilm is a wonderful media for preservation it has pitfalls for the transcriber.
I have just had the experience of seeing images obtained from Derbyshire Record Office at Matlock after FamilySearch Indexing treatment of the early parish register for BLAYDON entries. Imaginatively these have been rendered as a number of names PARDONE being but one example. The comparison between a digital image from microfilm and the permitted ultra violet image of the same entry from the damaged original parish register clearly yields BLADON entries.
I work from original parish registers and have used Ultra violet lighting for many years. Microfilm is a flat one dimensional image; handling the original and being able to control light sources and magnification enables the experienced transcriber to produce a consistent transcript. FamilySearch does not seem to realise the limitations of volunteers seeing only a handful of images. It appears that the margin for error in their material is therefore increased. The search for the correct surname is fruitless; the original parish register yields dozens of results.
Bromley has an original register which is a composite register in which Baptisms marriages and burials are mingled in a series of pages in a sort of chronological order which becomes more established when it is rebound into three sections in 1652.
The original purpose of the parish register was set out in 1538 by Henry VIII as part of his Reformation of the Church.Elizabeth I further ordered that a Register Book be provided in every parish to record the births death and marriages in the parish. Thus the first volume of the Bromley Parish Registers bears the title:
"The Register of Bromley in Kent,begun Anno Domini 1558,was all new bound w[ith] addicons of new leaves,Anno Domini 1652".
here the transcriber handling the volume has an immediate advantage of the context of each sequence of pages ; the microfilm view has limited context.
Also within the heading there is an entry:
Baptisms, 29 November 1558-13 January 1715
Burials, 13 November 1578-27 July 1678
Marriages,24 January 1575-31 January 1734.
The register is remarkable in recording events during the anarchy of record keeping during the Commonwealth and I know of no recorded history of conflict in the town. The baptismal register contains an entry on the only page apparently affected by upheaval.The Minister of Bromley Parish from 1640-1646 was Richard Antrobus, The year which contains fewest entry is 1644 and a 1646 entry has been inserted into a page which had been drafted for that year. The 7 leaves of the Commonwealth years baptisms are with the exception of 1644 and 1645 reasonably consistent and may represent all baptisms; in 1844 there are only 7 entries including the christening of Richard Antrobus' own son given the name Richard. The page contains an entry "this was the register in the wars among ourselves". The last months of the year maintain an order and 11 entries are recorded for the following year 1645; 1646 has 22 entries and thereafter the record appears to represent a full record of baptisms.
In 1646 Richard Antrobus was replaced as Minister. According to Lambeth Palace records on 18 April 1646 John Harvey replaced Antrobus who had presumably drafted a page for entries for 1644; the 1646 insertion of a baptism onto the 1684 page is presumably the hand of Harvey.
On 22 August 1648 Harvey is replaced by Joseph Jackson; in the same year Henry Arnold begans his ministry which runs from 1648-1662.
Bromley is unusual in maintaining greater consistency in records than other parishes in the district and therefore offers greater record sources than other parishes nationally.
I am also indebted once again to the work of Arthur Gresley Hellicar one of the 19th century long serving Vicars of the parish for his description of the contents:
"There are eleven leaves of the Register filled with Baptisms in Queen Elizabeth's reign,over 850 in all,as there is an average of 39 on each side of a leaf. The Baptisms in James I's reign fill 8 leaves(making 624): those of Charles I 7 leaves (546); those of the Commonwealth 7: and those of Charles II,12 (936)"
The transcript is undergoing several stages of proof reading to resolve some issues in the marriage register and will be available later this year at Kent Online Parish Clerks. The marriage register has some entries in the 1600's which need context to narrow the year of the event. It is interesting to see the variant spellings of the surname which becomes fixed as JEWEL[L] in different hands and to see that surnames can shift in different hands within a few years difference.
Showing posts with label FamilySearch Indexing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FamilySearch Indexing. Show all posts
Saturday, 15 March 2014
Friday, 25 October 2013
To blog or not to blog
For some years friends, colleagues and Geneabloggers have asked me why I don't blog. My answer has been that I don't have time, since my archive research and transcription of parish material takes up time and another media outlet both challenged my technical ability and time management. However gradually it appeared that the voice of the Parish Online Clerk is increasingly being heard (and occasionally listened to) and that help was available from long standing Geneabloggers the world over.
So here goes….
I first began transcribing in the 1960's as a result of a school project with my Latin teacher Mr. Diamond at Xaverian College Manchester. He took his students into Manchester Cathedral Archive to examine the Latin parish register of the ancient parish of Manchester. This was my first encounter with a Collegiate Church and I managed to not only transcribe two pages to submit to the Cathedral Archivist but also two pages for my class mate to copy and submit. Dave never threw any of his school things away and a few years ago scanned the two pages he still has to me in an email. The Archivist recommended grades. I had a high grade Dave had the lowest grade with a note that copying anothers work is unacceptable!
I returned to the archive and was encouraged to link with 3 genealogists who were busy transcribing parish registers in the Manchester Archive and at Cheshire County Record Office. I learned much from them and the team of four produced many typed transcripts.
As the surving member of the team I hold copyright to the transcripts. One of the copyright violations in recent years occurred when FamilySearch Indexing introduced a typed burial register (which they withdrew) to a collection of parish material from Lancashire parishes.
Nowadays in retirement I can look back over around 50 parish register transcripts I have produced. My 1940's portable typewriter (Army Clerks for the use of) was acquired from the Quartermaster's Stores of the 16th/5th Staffordshire Yeomanry in the 1950's. It helped that my father was Regimental Quarter Master and the machine was declared surplus to Museum requirements. It was reputed to have visited France in 1944 via Normandy.
From the keys flowed thousands of typed transcript entries and as a genealogy student much more besides. I could still use the art of assembling an alphabetical index of parish entries although that art is dying out as a generation of long serving archivists retire and transcribers depart.
For two years I have been an Online Parish Clerk for Downe in Kent and my research and transcriptions are available on several other Kent Online Parish Clerks pages. Downe has a parish register which commences in 1829 and is bound in a deed. The deed has no connection with Downe; save the mention of an ancestor of an owner of Down House. The deed became the outer cover of the early Composite register in the late nineteenth century due to the thickness of the vellum and the Rector includes a conveniently dated note of the binding of the register. Down House became home to Charles Darwin and his family for the last 40 years of his life.
It is a pleasure to be invited to family reunions in the village, the most notable being the Manning family whose forebears left the village in the 1500's!
Copyright Henry Mantell
So here goes….
I first began transcribing in the 1960's as a result of a school project with my Latin teacher Mr. Diamond at Xaverian College Manchester. He took his students into Manchester Cathedral Archive to examine the Latin parish register of the ancient parish of Manchester. This was my first encounter with a Collegiate Church and I managed to not only transcribe two pages to submit to the Cathedral Archivist but also two pages for my class mate to copy and submit. Dave never threw any of his school things away and a few years ago scanned the two pages he still has to me in an email. The Archivist recommended grades. I had a high grade Dave had the lowest grade with a note that copying anothers work is unacceptable!
I returned to the archive and was encouraged to link with 3 genealogists who were busy transcribing parish registers in the Manchester Archive and at Cheshire County Record Office. I learned much from them and the team of four produced many typed transcripts.
As the surving member of the team I hold copyright to the transcripts. One of the copyright violations in recent years occurred when FamilySearch Indexing introduced a typed burial register (which they withdrew) to a collection of parish material from Lancashire parishes.
Nowadays in retirement I can look back over around 50 parish register transcripts I have produced. My 1940's portable typewriter (Army Clerks for the use of) was acquired from the Quartermaster's Stores of the 16th/5th Staffordshire Yeomanry in the 1950's. It helped that my father was Regimental Quarter Master and the machine was declared surplus to Museum requirements. It was reputed to have visited France in 1944 via Normandy.
From the keys flowed thousands of typed transcript entries and as a genealogy student much more besides. I could still use the art of assembling an alphabetical index of parish entries although that art is dying out as a generation of long serving archivists retire and transcribers depart.
For two years I have been an Online Parish Clerk for Downe in Kent and my research and transcriptions are available on several other Kent Online Parish Clerks pages. Downe has a parish register which commences in 1829 and is bound in a deed. The deed has no connection with Downe; save the mention of an ancestor of an owner of Down House. The deed became the outer cover of the early Composite register in the late nineteenth century due to the thickness of the vellum and the Rector includes a conveniently dated note of the binding of the register. Down House became home to Charles Darwin and his family for the last 40 years of his life.
It is a pleasure to be invited to family reunions in the village, the most notable being the Manning family whose forebears left the village in the 1500's!
Copyright Henry Mantell
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