Wisdom Wednesday: National Burial Index

Yet another source of death/burial information is the National Burial Index (NBI) for England and Wales. This project of the Federation of Family History Societies is a finding aid to over 18.4 million burial records taken from Anglican parish, non-conformist, Quaker, Roman Catholic and cemetery burial registers that are held by local repositories, family history societies and groups. For an overview of the content, the process used to create the NBI and the area of coverage, consult www.ffgs.org.uk/projects/nbi/nbi-overview.php.

The project started in 1994 and published its first 5 million+ results in 2001. “The majority of the records cover the period from 1813 - 1850 but the index does extend significantly in both directions from these dates.”

The latest edition, the 3^rd, is available on CD from FFHS or is online as part of the Parish Records Collection 1538-2005 at www.FindMyPast.co.uk.  Find My Past is a subscription site that also has a pay per view plan. Considering the high postage costs you might incur ordering the CDs, Find My Past may make sense. You can purchase the CDs from the National Archives online bookshop. They were recently offered at the sale price of £25.

Another relevant website is www.findmypast.co.uk/content/ffgs/nbi. Besides a description of NBI, there is much information about burial practices among the religions of the UK. The section begins with the intriguing statement, “There are traditionally three types of Christians in England.” It then goes on to talk about the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and Non-Conformists. It ends with a paragraph or two about Non-denominational and Atheist Burials.

I know I have faithful readers who may think that over the summer I have said most of what there is to say about non-conformity in the UK. Do NOT believe it! Please go to this website and enjoy!

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: Burial Grounds for Non-Conformists

I have written about cemeteries as I have given details about non-conformist movements, the Quakers and the Jews, during the summer and fall. To summarize, all towns had a cemetery controlled and paid for by the Church of England (COE) with local taxes, and other denominations owned their own burial grounds. In the U.S., we would call all of these ‘private’ cemeteries and be baffled that the government paid for those owned by the COE. Are there any places in the UK that correspond to our ‘public’ cemeteries where anyone can be burial no matter what their faith or lack thereof? Yes!

Thanks to the September 2012 Norfolk Ancestor, I know that the first non-denominational cemetery in the UK was in Norwich, the seat of the county. The Norwich subgroup of the Norfolk Family History Society took a tour of it last June.

The Rosary Cemetery was originally a five acre market garden, and then it was purchased by Thomas Drummond, a retired Unitarian minister. The first burial took place in 1821, and it was not wildly popular. However, gradually more people began using it so that by 1900 about 18,000 burials had taken place. Later, an additional five acres plot was added. It is located on Rosary Road in the eastern area of the city, off Yarmouth Road. The cemetery was operated by a private board of trustees until 1954, when it was purchased by the city.  

A website to learn more about its history and burial customs generally is found at: www.heritagecity.org/research-centre/social-innovation/rosary-cemetery.htm. Topics of general interest include: body snatchers, water contamination and high death rate. In a section called ‘Restrictions on Dissenters,’ there is a nice summary of how difficult burials were for those not affiliated with the COE.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: Deceased Online

Happy Halloween! What better day to talk about www.deceasedonline.com, a UK website specializing in cemetery and burial records.  
As you might guess, I write my blog posts ahead in case something comes up or I’m scheduled to be out of town so I am writing what you are reading on Friday, 12 Oct 2012. Today, Dick Eastman (www.eogn.com), premier gen blogger, notes that Deceased Online has added new records for the Greenwich Cemetery, down river from London.

Some of the following information is from a Deceased Online news release. The addition completes this cemetery which has about 93,000 records covering 1856-2000. Many people buried here were associated with the military.

Other details about Greenwich Cemetery and the others covered by the site are available at the ‘database coverage’ area of www.deceasedonline.com. You need to click on the lower right side of the home page. A list of records will appear, listed by the date they were added to the database. That is good for former or regular users of the site who just want to know what’s new. There is a drop down menu that lets you choose to see the list ‘By Name,’ that is alphabetically.

If you have ancestors in Greenwich, home of Greenwich Mean Time, you are lucky. Your chances of finding their burial information at this site is better than average because four of the five cemeteries and a crematorium are here with a total of over 400,000 records. They are anticipating that the fifth cemetery will go online soon. 

At this point in my posts I often go into detail about using a site, but I am going to refer you to the official Deceased Online blog at http://deceasedonlineblog.blogspot.co.uk. When I first went to the site, the newest post was titled, ‘How to Find Your Ancestors in the Deceased Online Database.’ Just scroll down a little, if there are newer posts in the past two weeks. Please read this information and I will not reinvent the wheel. 

I will highlight these facts: you must register for the site but that is free; full details are not always free, and you will find a chart for buying credits, as is common on UK sites. I did a search for a fictitious Angus MacDonald and 45 possibilities appeared with burial dates, birth dates and cemetery names.

Note: I do have travel plans but hope not to disrupt my posts.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well