All Saints, West Ham, indexing

[Diblet]

I can't even begin to count the number of hours I've spent over the years trawling through unindexed registers but to be honest, I've thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

If there's been a parish that I've been particularly interested in, I've indexed it myself. It's slow and laborious (especially for large parishes) but time well spent.

The end result often produces a lot of surprises too! 

[clairec666]

It's been an interesting experience researching my Essex family. A little slow-going at times, but very rewarding. Often the first time I'd learn a new ancestor's name it was on the original parish register image, handwritten by somebody who knew them, rather than a transcription typed into a computer a century or two later.

An index would come in handy from time to time though. And West Ham seems to be a huge district in terms of people (from my experience anyway), and I've yet to find any marriages of my relatives there on SEAX yet.

I've started indexing some Essex registers for SEAX, and if a lot of us chip in, hopefully we can make things easier for others.

[farmeroman]

To be honest, when I'm spending a week on a fruitless search through about 20 Colchester parishes, I'm not thinking about how great this has saved me a trip to Chelmsford, I'm grumbling to myself that this would be a hell of lot easier on the 2 main subscription sites.

Indexes of some parishes, including Colchester, are available on CD from the Essex Society for Family History at http://www.esfh.org.uk/.

Unfortunately their website has a problem on the payment page at the moment and I can't complete my purchase for 4 CDs (Colchester Indexes funnily enough)...

[Scrabble]

FreeReg has transcriptions of many Essex parishes so is always worth searching. However the only bit of All Saints West Ham transcribed by them so far is Marriages 1813-1817.

Scrabble