FINDING PARISH RECORDS FOR THE UK
©2008 by Donald R. Snow
Sections of the Class Notes
This page was last updated 2008-08-16.
Return to the Hyde Park Family History Centre Home Page or the Events Page or the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class Listings Page .
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION TO CLASS
- Instructors are Elder and Sister Donald R. and Diane M. Snow of the England London Mission, London Family History Centre (snowd@math.byu.edu , dms34@juno.com)
- These notes with active Internet links are posted on the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group website http://uvtagg.org under Class Outlines , Don's Listings , and are linked on the London Family History Centre website http://www.hydeparkfhc.org under Events . Many other class notes for family history are linked at both sites also.
- Records for parishes in the UK consist of various kinds of kinds
- Parish registers -- written records of christenings (births), mariages, and burials (deaths)
- Bishop's transcripts -- yearly reports of the christenings, marriages, and burials written to the Bishop of the diocese that the parish was in
- Miscellaneous records -- vestry minutes, churchwarden records, parish chest records
- Your ancestors' names might be in any of these, but for genealogical purposes, parish registers and Bishop's Transcripts are the most important and will be the focus of this class.
- Links to these topics in other online classes notes
will be shown.
THE FAMILY HISTORY LIBRARY CATALOGUE - THE FHLC
- The FHLC lists all the films the LDS Church has done of records throughout the world
- Go to http://www.familysearch.org and click on Library/Library Catalog
- Do a Place search for the parish you want
- See Church Records to find parish registers
- See Church Records - Indexes to find indexes to
these church records
- Example
- Do a place search for Brampton and select the one in Derbyshire, England
- Select Church Records and you see the list of the films the LDS Church has done of churches in (Old and New) Brampton - note the variety of church records they have filmed
- Go back and select Church Record - Indexes and look at the list of indexes of church records there
- Select Parish Register Printouts of Old Brampton (St. Peter) Christenings
- From the Notes section write down the C-4836-1 -- this is a clue to the IGI batch number
- Remove the hyphens and add leading zeros to get a 6-digit number, C048361
- This is the batch number for these christening records indexed in the IG
- Change the C to an M to get the marriage records batch number, namely M048361
- Can go to IGI and search with these batch numbers to find all the christenings, marriages, or just those for a surname, e.g. the Browns, for example
- Sometimes changing the last digit to a 0, 2, 3, .etc, gives more IGI batches for this parish
- See more details about IGI batches in the section
below.
- See more details on the FHLC in Don's class notes on the FHLC
THE LONDON FAMILY HISTORY CENTRE CATALOGUE
- See http://www.londonfhc.org for the London FHC film catalogue
- See the old website http://www.hydeparkfhc.org for many other things at the London FHC. (All of these will be moved to the new website eventually, but at present only the catalogue is complete there.)
- To see if the London FHC has a particular film or fiche, type that number into the search box on the London FHC website.
- The London FHC has about 50,000 UK and Irish films -- the largest collection of UK parish records in the world outside of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City
FINDING IGI BATCH NUMBERS FOR PARISHES
- Batches in the IGI are the collections of names indexed from particular parish or other records
- Searching with a batch number will show just those IGI entries indexed (extracted) from that parish -- very
helpful
- To do batch number searches
- On http://www.familysearch.org go to Search and click on IGI
- Type the batch number into the box and select the region, e.g. C040371 and British Isles
- Searching in the batch with no name will give everyone indexed in that batch -- all from that parish
- Searching in the batch with just given name or just surname will give all persons in that batch (parish) with that name
- Helpful when you don't know or can't read the
surname, but know the given name
- Batches in the IGI usually show the films they were indexed from, so you can go directly to that film and see the entry
- Original parish registers usually contain more information than what was indexed in the IGI, e.g. father's
occupation or residence
- The IGI is a compiled (secondary) source, so the
original parish registers usually contain more information
- A few batches in the IGI do not show the source film number, e.g. batch I010106, so you have to find it in other
ways
- If you need one of these, check with Elder Snow at
the London Family History Centre and he will try to find the source film
number for you, usually by writing to Salt Lake City.
- Ways to find batch numbers
- See more details on IGI batch numbers in Don's notes about Searching the IGI
OTHER SOURCES
CONCLUSION
- Good family history research requires that you check the original records of where your ancestors lived since you can verify, correct, and find further information there.
- Then enter the complete information and reference in
your genealogy database so you and others can find the records again.
ASSIGNMENT
- Find the parish register microfilm number for a parish in the UK that one of your ancestors was from.
- Find the IGI batch number for a parish you might be intersted in.
- Find the history and description of a parish your
ancestors were from by using one of the other sources shown.
Return to the Hyde Park Family History Centre Home Page or the Events Page or the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class Listings Page.