Name the church

[king otg]

Name the church

The most disappointing thing in genealogy is when somebody has gone to the trouble and expense of buying a certificate or visiting a record office to gather information and then, when they decide to share the details with others, they name either the registration district or the abode instead of the parish. It makes it is very difficult for anybody else to check the information and, unless somebody is prepared to go to the same trouble and expense, it is of limited value. For all we know it could be fabricated.

If it is intended it defeats the purpose of sharing. If it is unintended it means more care should be taken to ensure that the information is correctly recorded. Church events are always filed under a particular parish. The name of the registration district is less precise because it includes many parishes and non-church wedding places.

To figure out where a marriage took place, given only the registration district, requires a large database containing similar examples. The solution, in some regions, has been the creation of reverse GRO Indexes (freely available online) which name the precise church or, if it was a non-church wedding, it will say so. Other methods include using the censuses and a map to establish where the family lived at about the same time as the event.

With regard to baptism, marriage and burial registers, writing down the applicable page number is useful but it is a mistake not to make a note of the church named at the top of the page (or previous pages if it is blank). Church names can change but whatever church appears on the page is going to be more accurate than anything else since the date of any name-change is a matter of official record.

When additional churches develop out of the mother church they sometimes have the same name so it is worthwhile noting how the church has been archived. Record offices specialise in putting information in the correct place so their system is the most reliable. Some popular online indexes, those which do not specialise in identifying the church name, can be misleading.

When the abode is not the same place as the church it is a reminder to make a clear note of which parish it is.

In my database, 1,200 pages and 50,000 entries, I try to include as many references to English and Welsh gipsies and travellers as possible.

Copies of my database will eventually be deposited at selected Record Offices. It will be distributed in PDF format and I have divided it into 6 regions: East, Greater London, North, South East, South West and West. The regional files are between 200 and 300 pages in length (about 10,000 entries each).

Families which travelled widely are best located in the amalgamated edition where everything comes together in one place and where, using ‘Word’, it is quick and easy to extract details. It is the version that I will retain. There is also an expurgated edition from which recent baptisms and those surnames having just one entry have been deleted. These two enormous files are cumbersome in PDF.

If sufficient interest is shown I will provide a list of record offices which have been given a copy of the database. There are none at present because I am still proof-reading.

TL

[king otg]

No interest shown so far, except from Berlin-Bob who has a similar idea, but I can confirm that Hampshire Archives will receive a copy of the database from September 2013 onwards. Whether they receive the Expurgated Edition or the South West Gipsy Index (or both) is yet to be decided.

When deciding which Record Offices deserve a free copy I take into account how much I enjoyed working there and what reaction I received to previous donations. In both respects Hampshire is outstanding.

There was a time, in the recent past, when my database was freely available to everybody but there was insufficient interest shown so the offer was withdrawn. I can understand this because it is difficult to grasp its significance without seeing it. When I obtained a printout of the full database it was too heavy to carry.

TL

[ROMANYGENES]

I think its an excellent Idea and any researcher will value it and the importance of it  .

[social-butterflies]

  Brilliant idea
hope ERO gets a copy as I would love to use the search data.

[king otg]

Essex Record Office sent a nice letter acknowledging receipt of my previous donation on CD-Rom so they are halfway there. I would like to deposit a copy of the regional database in at least one record office within each region and I have already begun copying to disc. It seems likely that the South-West will receive several while the Greater London area, which includes the overspill from Essex, may be limited to Bromley and Bexley libraries.

These are the titles of the works and the counties covered by each database. They contain approximately 50 entries per page and are not for sale:

Eastern England & East Midlands Gipsy Index (EGI) covers Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Essex, Huntingdonshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Suffolk (266pp)

Greater London Gipsy Index (GLGI) covers Hertfordshire, London, Middlesex, and the Greater London Boroughs (there is some overlap with neighbouring regions to the south and east) (216pp)

Northern England Gipsy Index (NGI) covers Cumberland, Durham, that part of Lancashire now included in Cumbria, Northumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire, Scottish Borders (231pp)

South East England Gipsy Index (SEGI) covers Kent, Surrey, Sussex (263pp)

South Central & South West Gipsy Index (SWGI) covers Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Wiltshire, Isle of Wight, Channel Islands (270pp)

Wales & West England Gipsy Index (WGI) covers Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Wales, Isle of Man (252pp)

The A to Z of Gipsy Genealogies Amalgamated Edition (1156pp); Expurgated Edition (1088pp)

Although the works are referred to as 'Gipsy' indexes I have not tried to distinguish between one type of traveller and another. Some of the entries are 'gipsylike' while others are included because they are known to be connected to travelling people. The data is there to assessed and sorted by the reader.

TL

[peggysmum]

i have found all the info you have sent me to be very intresting kotg so would certainly like to be able to study more of your database and not just on my own families i should imagine it would be a very intresting study of gypsy people.

[jess5athome]

A great idea.

[susan hemmings]

What a smashing thing to have undertaken.  An enormous amount of people will be interseted in this.  A good idea re naming a parish in our research.  I know exactly what you mean.

Susan

[king otg]

A provisional list of Record Offices has been drawn up and, from September 2013 onwards, will be the first to receive a copy of the database covering their particular region. Further donations are partly dependent upon researchers asking a record office to request a copy. Since I am bearing all the costs it will work better if my efforts are directed at assisting those who take a particular interest rather than indiscriminate distribution.

Record offices which are not on the following list might (or might not) receive a donation later but when asking a record office to request a copy you are not limited to the region where you live. Any record office can ask for any regional index at your request.

If, for example, you are interested in a surname which travelled mostly in the south of England , such as COOPER, you would find SEGI and SWGI to be of greatest value. If your nearest record office is Maidstone you would need to explain your surname interests to the archivist so that he or she could make the case for requesting a copy of SWGI. Maidstone does not have to explain its interest in SEGI because SEGI covers Kent however there is nothing listed under ‘Kent’ in SWGI.

In selecting the following record offices I am not taking into account whether or not they have the necessary facilities. They may have additional requirements so it is a good idea to contact them before visiting in order to obtain up-to-date information.

EGI:
Cambridge
Huntingdon
Matlock [Derbys]
Wigston Magna [Leics]

GLGI:
Bromley [Kent] Library
Ilford [Redbridge] Library

NGI:
Beverley
Doncaster
Heslington [York]
Newcastle
Northallerton

SEGI:
Bromley [Kent] Library
Canterbury [East Kent]
Chichester [W Sussex]
Strood [Kent]

SWGI:
Chippenham [Wilts]
Cowley [Oxon]
Dorchester [Dorset]
Sowton [Devon]
Truro [Cornwall]
Winchester [Hants]

WGI:
Aberystwyth [National Library of Wales]
Chester
Gloucester
Hereford
Shrewsbury
Stafford
Warwick

Bromley Library is listed under both GLGI and SEGI because it will receive both regional indexes. The Bromley region contributes to both Kent and Greater London.

The record offices will be told that they cannot make copies of the works so you should not expect to find copies in other record offices within the same county unless they have been donated separately.

TL