Marriages in the 1850s

The marriages at All Saints Church for the period 1850 to 1859 have now been transcribed and added to the website.

Marriages in the 1840s

The marriages at All Saints Church for the period 1840 to 1849 have now been transcribed and added to the website. I've also noted down in the comments column if I spotted witnesses later getting married to each other!

April update

There has been an update to the site this month - the marriages from 1 July 1837 to the end of that year have been added. As you know from my Moving Target 2012 list, I hope to have all the marriages from 1837 to 1851 transcribed and uploaded by the end of the year, along with all those other projects of course!

It never rains...

but it pours - the microfilm of the Wing marriages for the initial period I am going to transcribe has arrived as well. While I should be able to head over to the library this weekend and take a look, I'm going to be too busy at work (i.e. my real job with real deadlines that involve real extra hours to be put in) to have much time to work on either this or the valuation book project over the next fortnight. Still, they ARE both jobs that break down into individual pages, so a little bit here and there might be manageable...

December update

If you're in the UK or somewhere else in the Northern Hemisphere, you'll be looking for something to fill your long winter evenings. I have prepared a bumper update for you this month so you can really get stuck into your genealogical research! Remember that each individual page on the website can be accessed directly via the sitemap - have you missed something interesting?

Big stuff:
* Burials for the period 1813 to 1845 have been added. The website now has a complete run of burial transcriptions from Oct 1783 to May 1909.
* I'm very excited to announce that the Buckinghamshire Record Society has given me permission to reproduce the 1798 Posse Comitatus for Wing. I've wanted to include this list of men on the website ever since I started the one-place-study, and now it's available.

Little stuff:
* There's a dozen or so new military men, including several serving in World War 1
* Some Methodist tweaks - I've illustrated the Methodist Roll page with an extract for the HEADY family, added Joseph WOOLHEAD to the Methodist page, and added a link to where the Wesleyan Metropolitan Register can now be found online (index + scans)
* Corrections to the Links and For Sale pages for some information that has changed
* I was getting tired of the monochromatic look, so we've gone green for the festive season.

Happy hunting!

November update

This month I have another batch of baptisms for you! These new records cover from 1837 (including a couple at the end of 1836) to half way through 1870. The 1214 baptisms bring the total number of baptisms on the website up to 2014, with the period 1813 to May 1870 now covered.

As I've mentioned before in this blog, while this baptism register is included as an extracted batch in the IGI there are too many omissions in the IGI version to make it reliable. There's also more information on each original entry than you will find in the IGI, most noteably father's occupation and abode, but also sometimes other snippets like birth day and time! If you've relied on the IGI to provide some of the entries in your Wing family trees and haven't yet looked at the original parish registers, please consider taking the time to review my baptism transcriptions - if nothing else, you will have confirmed the information you have on hand, and there's a fair chance you'll gain some useful new information or some new entries as well.

Other things that have been updated this month:
* a new brickmaker, George RUST, has been located
* a new trial witness, William LATHWELL, has been added to the crime page
* a new marriage stray, for Jesse BOLTON and Emma SMITH, has been provided
* three new BOLTONs serving in WW1 have been added (thanks to Janice for the tipoff on her grandfather's record in the National Roll, which led me to the other two)

February update

To make up for the fact there wasn't a January update, it's a bumper one this time - I've cleaned up a lot of outstanding filing and added all those snippets to the website:

First up is a good overhaul of the "Commercial Records" page necessitated by the various takeovers and closures in the genealogical publishing industry.

There's been some 17th century action, with new additions to the non-conformist page plus new will extracts for Richard Honor from 1664 and Elizabeth Lathwell from 1663.

Three marriage strays from the Waddesdon parish registers in the early 1800s have been added.

Some new finds on Google Books and the London Gazette have been added to the Miscellany page, the Adams murder page, the strawplaiting and brickmaking pages.

Jumping forward to the 20th century, the 1935 Kellys directory has been added.

And lastly, there's a new graphic greeting you on the front page. This is a vintage postcard from the early 1900s which I thought was eminently suitable for the home page.

Remember you can press Ctrl-F5 in your browser to refresh the home page if it's still showing as December - enjoy!

Isn't it ironic

I've been busily working on transcribing the next volume of baptisms for the website. These cover the 1837 to 1869 period - 1216 entries so it's taking a while! I had transcribed them all, and was about an hour's worth of time away from finishing checking them, but alas someone else has ordered the film so it's had to be sent back and my little project will have to wait until next year!

So if you'd just ordered 1042446 through your local LDS family history centre, hello there and I hope you find what you're looking for!

I won't be putting the transcriptions up on the website until they're checked but I'm happy to do lookups in it in the meantime, so feel free to email me about baptisms 1837 to 1869 (or burials 1833 to 1845 as I also have those transcribed but unchecked).

Out of steam

I'm up to 1848 in the baptisms, but the enthusiasm is starting to wane a bit......376 entries down, only 840 in this volume to go!

Big days for baptisms

I managed to transcribe another year of baptisms this week - yes, only a single year's worth! I blame curate John Felix though. It's not like he let things slide and had to do a big catchup that year, but for some reason on 25 Jun 1837 he baptised 16 people, then the following Sunday 2 July another 25!

This coincides with the introduction of civil registration on 1 July that year - but I suspect that this isn't actually just coincidence. I wonder what conversations were being held in Wing around this time!

October update

Another month, another update, and it's another big one! The first batch of 800 baptisms have been transcribed, these cover the years 1813 to 1836 inclusive - as with last month's burials, you may want to check the sitemap for links to individual years. And as I've previously mentioned, around 25% of these are NOT in the IGI extracted batch for this period so I'm hoping that some of you will be able to solve some mysteries (or maybe inadvertently shake your existing tree).

I've also made some minor changes to the Methodist page (thanks to Ewart Tearle who has allowed me to use his photo of the old Primitive Methodist Chapel building), and the links page - some of the linked pages had moved on but I've managed to track them all down again now.

Now I'm off to doublecheck that all those baptisms are correctly reflected in my own tree!

Parish Registers vs Bishops Transcripts

I mentioned bishops transcripts a few blog posts ago. Newbies might appreciate knowing a bit more about bishops transcripts, and how they differ from parish registers.

Parish registers are the primary source of information about key life events that took place within the parish church (baptisms, marriages and burials). Exactly what information was recorded about these events depends on the timeframe it occurred (generally the later it was the more information you will get) and the clergyman involved in recording the entry. Some vicars were more conscientious about recordkeeping than others, and some were simply more opinionated than others! The vicars of Wing were generally pretty good with recordkeeping and there are certainly comments and other pieces of information over and above the norm scattered throughout the parish registers.

In order to gain more visibility about what was going on at parish level, each diocese requested that an exact copy of the records be made each year and sent in to them. These were known as bishops transcripts. While they are supposed to be an exact copy, obviously mistakes and omissions may have occurred in preparing the transcript each year. On a happier note, if the original parish records were subsequently damaged or lost the bishops transcripts can act as a replacement source of information for genealogists. It may not be apparent from the parish records that such a loss has occurred, so if you are looking for a particular entry in the parish registers and don't find it you should probably also check the bishops transcripts if available, on the offchance that the entry does exist there.

The practice of making bishops transcripts ran up until 1837 when civil registration came in. Wing's surviving bishops transcripts run from 1600 to 1842 with some gaps, most notably the 1672 to 1701 period.

The reason I used bishops transcripts in my comparison with the IGI baptisms was simply because I happened to have them at hand, as I was checking to make sure there wasn't a missing marriage for one of my MUNDAYs in there. I'm now transcribing the actual parish registers for baptisms for that same period, so can report that the BTs and the PRs are fairly consistent with each other. There is the odd entry missed out from the BTs, a few dates (generally the month for some reason) recorded differently, and minor spelling variations (Anne vs Ann, or Ascott vs Ascot) but definitely much less variation between the PRs and the BTs than there was between the BTs and the IGI!

September update

Only one update this month, but it's a goodie! The 803 burials in Wing from 1846 to 1874 inclusive have now been transcribed and are on the website.

Don't forget about the sitemap on the website, which has a direct link to every individual page on the site. You can find the link to the sitemap at the bottom of the right-hand column on the homepage, and once there you can click through directly to any of the new years of burials.

Transcriptions of all the burials from the start of the Wing parish registers in 1546 through to 1909 are now readily available as follows:
1546 to 1782 - in the Woodman transcripts (available on CD from S&N Genealogy Supplies)
1783 to 1812 - on my website
1813 to 1845 - in the National Burial Index (available on CD from FFHS)
1846 to 1909 - on my website

I won't be getting around to transcribing either the 1813 to 1845 period or the pre 1782 period of burials any time soon - given the deficiences in the IGI extracted batches for baptisms I'll probably turn my attention to getting complete transcriptions of the baptisms next! They're much slower going than burials though......

Oh so quiet

Between the Northern Hemisphere enjoying their summer holidays and the Southern Hemisphere hibernating, it seems a bit quiet on the genealogical front at the moment. My email inbox has all but dried up this month (apart from the spam of course). I've been working away on getting some more Wing burials transcribed, and it does look hopeful that they might be ready in time for the September website update - just as well, as I haven't prepared anything else this time around!

Handy Hints - IGI

Genealogist newbies might appreciate the odd handy hint and useful tidbit of information about sources and "best practice". Comparing the Wing data in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) with the actual data from parish registers proved quite illuminating, so here are some things you might like to know.

By way of background, entries in the IGI all have a batch number. Those that are noted as being "extracted batches" have been indexed by the LDS church from the parish records of the place in question. Conventional wisdom says these extracted entries are fairly reliable, while other entries which have been submitted by individuals can be fairly unreliable.

I have compared the baptism entries from the IGI batch C014632 for Wing with the bishop's transcripts for Wing for the years 1813 to 1816 inclusive. Here are some conclusions -

* If an entry is in the IGI, the details you can see for that entry are more than likely correct (ie no errors have probably been made in either the names or dates)

* However this does not mean that all the information in that original entry is included on the IGI. For example, at this time the parish registers will also tell you the abode - limited to village/hamlet - of the family (eg Thomas and Susannah BRASINGTON were living in Crafton when they baptised Sarah Bailey Brasington in 1813), the occupation of the father (eg John FOSTER is listed as a blacksmith when daughter Mary was baptised in 1814), and the name of the minister who performed the baptism. You may also get other non-standard pieces of information, like the fact two children baptised on the same day with the same parents were definitely twins!

* There may be further entries in the parish registers that have been missed out altogether in the extracted batches for the IGI. In the four years from 1813 to 1816, 37 of the 135 baptisms are missing - that's a whopping 27% of the entries you might have been looking for! So if you are connected to the Adams, Bailey, Bandy, Bolton, Bone, Brasington, Capp, Cheshire, Denchfield, Dimmock, Dollimer, Foster, Haggis, Hedges, Holyman, Jennings, Loe, Luck, Mead, Page, Pollard, Robbins, Rose, Simmons, Smelt, Staples, Steel, Woodman, Woolhead or Woster families, and have tried to construct your family tree over this period solely using the IGI, you definitely have some people missing (and perhaps even twins).

While the IGI is a great (and free!) resource, it should not be used in isolation to research or support your genealogy. It's an index only - and as we have seen, it is not necessarily a complete one. Your aim should always be to use original sources where possible.

The IGI can be accessed on the LDS website here:
IGI

Extracted batch numbers for Wing are:
P014631 - baptisms 1546-1812 (and a few burials)
C014632 - baptisms 1813-1870
C014633 - baptisms 1870-1881
M014631 - marriages 1546-1812
M014632 - marriages 1813-1881

The "Negro from Egypt"

Oh no! Yesterday evening I was all set, ready for two hours of transcribing burials for the 1846 to 1873 period, but alas! While I had ordered the right film number, and the box had the right film number on it, the actual film inside wasn't the right one.........

So while that gets sorted out, I'm looking at some of the bishops transcripts instead. Found an interesting entry I wasn't expecting in 1815 - the baptism of a "Negro from Egypt" who was a servant of the vicar's. My tired eyes were having trouble making out the name on the BTs but according to the IGI transcripts he (she?) is Abderazak Ibrim.

The slave trade had been banned in England in March 1807. Had this servant come in to England as a slave originally, or were they a recent arrival who had always enjoyed a standard employment arrangement? That's one topic I wasn't expecting to have to research in connection with Wing!

August update

New to the website this month is a summary of the brickmaking industry in Wing. It seems that most of the brickmakers themselves were "imports" from elsewhere, but a few were local and the brickmaking process and business makes for an interesting read.

Also (mostly) new this month are jury lists. There always were a couple of jury lists included on the Crime page, but I now have lists for more than a dozen new years in the late 1700s so they've been given their own separate page.

You'll also find a few more marriage strays that fellow researchers have submitted - keep them coming!

June update

New for this month is marriage strays. Did your ancestor acquire a wife or husband from parts unknown? Perhaps their marriage took place in one of the other parishes covered in the Phillimores transcriptions (which generally ran up to around 1812), and if so you will hopefully find them on my new marriage strays page.

I have also updated the Non-conformist and Methodist pages as we have been able to identify the BRAND family as Primitive Methodist - thanks for the information Bert!

And lastly I have added a link to the TYRRELL Family History Society - as I type this their website appears to be down but it definitely exists so keep trying if you are having problems.

Marriages

All the existing marriage pages (covering 1749 to 1783) have now been converted to the new format.

No March update

I've had such a busy February I haven't had a chance to finalise anything new for the website. I did get all the banns converted to the new format, ditto the 1841 and 1871 census which went up on the site yesterday. There's still a few more pages to convert to the new look (most notably the marriages), so those should appear over the next few weeks.

New bits waiting in the wings that didn't quite get finished in Feb are that pesky 1891 census, new pages about non-conformity in Wing including the people listed on the Methodist Roll of 1898, a few more wills to add, and sorting out a format for memorial inscriptions and photos. I hope lots of you will be able to contribute to this last one once it's up!