Essex baptism, banns, marriages and burials at FindMyPast

[StevieSteve]

Well the subscription sites do have the opportunity of making an arrangement to use the information from the LDS but as far as I remember there are an awful lot of gaps.

If that was the case, then this might be the extent of their coverage

https://familysearch.org/search/catalog/1465709

[Jebber]

I thought (and I don't know where I got this from, so it may be only my thought and not backed up!) that as Essex Pr's were on line in their entirety via Essex Ancestors on SEAX

Only those digitised up to 1964, and not all the Banns Registers and I agree with lizdb about ERO retaining the images on SEAX to recover they own costs.

None of my family show up in the Findmypast parish bmd indexes, only in the GRO index, I have already extracted them from SEAX

[dawnsh]

It's good to know the source of the data.

[lizdb]

The fact remains that not all PRs are on familysearch and subscription sites generally, and the best route to follow is to search PRs via Local Records offices.
That is a gross generalisation, I know, and familysearch and subscription sites can be the best places to start looking, and often in years and places where they do have full coverage, then results can be found easily and accurately.
But also lots of errors can be made by taking the best match from one of these sites, even a seemingly accurate match, when the "real" person is someone else whose record has not yet been transcribed on that site!

[vabbott]

Does anybody have any idea as to how complete (or otherwise) these collections are?

which areas were you looking for? Anyplace or person in particular. Maybe we can help you

Ronnie

[dawnsh]

Nothing specific Ronnie, thanks for asking.

I did a baptism search for 'John Smith' as I usually do when new databases turn up.

I was surprised to see how few there were and the lack of parishes.

I got the same sort of results as StevieSteve reply #5

[jbml]

But also lots of errors can be made by taking the best match from one of these sites, even a seemingly accurate match, when the "real" person is someone else whose record has not yet been transcribed on that site!

Yes ... I mark all of these as "tentative" for this very reason.