Findmypast "Lancashire Collection"

[ThrelfallYorky]

Looking for anyone in Lancashire - including most of Manchester  - don't forget the "Lancashire Parish clerks online" - just type it in, search and enjoy!
It's been a wonderful resource for my lot!

[ainslie]

Yes indeed, should have mentioned them.

[Pennines]

Yes Threlfall Yorky -- Lancs OPC is such a boon and all done by volunteers. Fantastic.

As a whole we are very lucky in Lancashire -- Lancashire BMD (from 1837) - is almost certainly the most comprehensive county BMD facility -- again all due to volunteers.

On Ancestry there are filmed Lancashire Parish Registers, filmed Manchester and surrounding districts registers - and filmed Liverpool ones as well.

With regard to the original query -- I may be wrong, but the Ancestry collection for Lancashire appears to be more comprehensive than the FindMyPast one at the moment -- and Ancestry are the filmed records. I appreciate that FindMyPast may just still be a 'work in progress' collection.

[Blue70]

Family Search is useful too they have a lot of records for the Liverpool area of the historic county of Lancashire links are available in RootsChat Lancs resources and on the Liverpool & SWL FHS forum. There are likely to be many record images for other parts of the historic county.


Blue

[andrewalston]

All the records I've looked at had associated images, though they don't seem to be from the exact same films used by Ancestry. Some seem to be copies of copies.

I looked for one marriage from my home town but it wasn't indexed. Using the reference from LancashireBMD, I browsed to the entry.

It was completely illegible, even though I knew what the names were. The equivalent image on Ancestry was perfectly fine.

Where there are transcriptions, they do seem better than Ancestry. For example a surname "TURNER" rather than "TARNES", reflecting the groom's signature rather than the clergyman's scrawl.

The coverage of parishes seems similar. No registers of Bolton or Warrington for example, though Ancestry does have the BTs for Warrington held by Lancashire Archives.

There are some registers which have been filmed more than once by Lancashire Archives. FindMyPast appear to have indexed both versions.

[frian]

I've also been browsing through the Lancashire Parish Registers section of FindMyPast and found the burial registers for Lancaster Borough Cemetery.  Looks interesting and I will explore that one further.
FindMyPast also corrects some of Ancestry's errors - e.g. Ancestry have the marriage registers of Christ Church, Glasson Dock under Christ Church, Lancaster (but no marriages for the latter!)  FindMyPast differentiates the two - and we finally get the marriage registers of both parishes.  Also more registers for parishes in the Lune Valley.  It's worth having a look if you, like me, have many Lancashire connections.
frian

[Jane Lucas]

Aulus.. I've only just seen this from July, and I can see you know the answer. But I thought I'd let you know that my experience has been that FindMyPast have now added original images to what before were only transcripts. I don't know how widespread this has been. But for certain people I've been researching for ages, suddenly the original image is available.

[ThrelfallYorky]

Do they have anything that Lancs Parish Clerks online doesn't have ... for free? that's a wonderful resource, it was that that got me started on looking into my family history.

[Jane Lucas]

It is a wonderful resource, and often I find things on there I can't find anywhere else. But if that leads me to an original image, that is frequently more informative than any transcription. Just little differences in order of words/abbreviations changed slightly etc are enlightening. And sometimes, as a bonus, you even get occupation and place of residence, often not included in a transcription, though I must say Lanc OPC are very good at doing so.