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: Scotland’s People Website

ScotlandsPeople is celebrating its tenth anniversary this month. It is a huge site with over 90 million digital records and images. Even as the staff takes a moment to savor its longevity, there are plans to post records of wills from 1902 to 1925. Congratulations!

I have one Scotsman in my family tree, Andrew Bruce Stewart. If I could find his parents and birthplace I would be one happy genealogist.  ScotlandsPeople is the best website for me to begin my search. Its URL is www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. Since it is a pay site, The first things I want to know are what is available without paying and how much it will cost to search for my GGgrandfather.

First, I need to log in at the top right of the home page – no payment required. Just under the log in area are five tabs – search the records, about the records, help and resources, FAQs, and features. I click on the ‘about the records’ tab and select ‘records availability’ from the dropdown menu. There is a chart of what indexes and images are available on the website. There are few that are free, but don’t be upset.

ScotlandsPeople is notable because it has indexes and images of most of its records. It has the censuses from 1841–1911. Civil Registration began in 1855, and the site has indexes for birth, marriages and deaths (BMDs) from that date to 2009, which are called the Statutory Registers. Because of privacy laws, the actual images can be viewed as follows: births, 1855-1911; marriages, 1855-1936; deaths, 1855-1961. ScotlandsPeople has indexed records of Church of Scotland, called Old Parish Registers and some catholic church registers beginning in 1553 to 1854. The site has a Valuation Roll from 1915. A segment is called ‘Free Search Records’ and includes wills dating from 1513 to 1901 and coats of arms.

What is Free?

Like many sites, information about the databases, directions for using the site and general genealogy tutorials are free. I found a few interesting things.

There is detailed information about each record group held so click on the “Search the Records” tab and then ‘Old Parish Records’. There you will find a description of the records of the established church, the Church of Scotland. In the 3500 registers that have been deposited are the BMD records, baptisms, banns and burials before 1855. However, “Registration in Church of Scotland's registers was costly and unpopular, so many people did not bother to register events at all.” In the early 19^th century, it was estimated that only 30 percent of the events in urban areas were recorded.

Under the tab ‘Help and Resources’, c lick ‘Getting Started.’ Near the bottom, you will see links to two topics I have posted about before. One is the Scottish Association of Family History Societies at www.safhs.org. It has a list of all the local societies around the country so you can contact or join the one that could be most helpful to you.

The last sentence on the screen states, ‘Handwriting help is available here.’  By clicking on the word ‘here’ you will be taken to a screen titled ‘Handwriting Help’ which is somewhat misnamed because it contains two links, only one about handwriting and the other vocabulary. The first link is to the Dictionary of the Scots Language (Dictionar o the Scots Leid) at www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/index.html.  The following from their website:

“The Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL) comprises electronic editions of the two major historical dictionaries of the Scots language: the 12-volume Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) and the 10-volume Scottish National Dictionary (SND). DOST contains information about Scots words in use from the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth centuries (Older Scots); and SND contains information about Scots words in use from 1700 to the 1970s (modern Scots). Together these 22 volumes provide a comprehensive history of Scots, and a New Supplement now (2005) brings the record of the language up to date. These are therefore essential research tools for… historical or literary scholars whose sources are written in Scots…”

The second link is to www.scottishhandwriting.com. There is a one-hour basic tutorial along with three more specific ones in the category ‘tutorial’ in the list on the left of the home screen. Before leaving the main page, you might want to click on ‘this week’s poser’. The one for 5 Sep 2012 is a baptism certificate from Edinburgh which is quite challenging.

What is the cost?

The site runs on credits. You buy credits with your credit card, and when they are used up, you buy more.  The charges are detailed under the ‘About Our Records’ tab; click ‘charges.’

For seven Great Britain pounds (7 GBP), you receive 30 page credits that are good for one year. The Statutory Records, Old Parish Records, Catholic Records and Censuses cost one page credit for an index page with 25 results and five page credits for an actual image. The description of the process of charging for viewing an index page sounds complicated to me, but I haven’t used it yet.  I quote from the Scotlandspeople website:

·         Charges for index-searching are based on the number of pages actually displayed, not on the number of records retrieved.

·         Each time you do a search, you are told how many records have been found; each record refers to a specific event, ie a particular birth/baptism, marriage or death.

·         Before displaying the records, you have the opportunity to re-define, and narrow the search, without displaying the results.

·         If you decide to view these records, they are displayed in pages each containing a maximum of 25 records. One page of results costs 1 credit.

It is free to view the index to wills and coats of arms. Images of wills can be purchased with 10 credits no matter the length. A coat of arms image is 10 GBP per document.

ScotlandsPeople Centre
General Register House
2 Princes Street
Edinburgh
EH1 3YY

A companion website answers questions for those who want to visit the Centre in Edinburgh: www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk

I am going to spend time looking for Andrew Bruce Stewart now. If I find him or have insights on  using ScotlandsPeople, you will hear from me soon.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: Research in Northern Ireland

The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has moved to the Titanic Quarter of Belfast. In an effort to revitalize the former shipbuilding area, new housing, offices and a museum about the ship called Titanic Belfast are being developed. The doomed Cunard vessel was built on one of these very docks.

Although the move was in 2011, many books and lists still give the old address while the website remains the same, www.proni.gov.uk

                    2 Titanic Boulevard, Belfast, BT3 9HQ

PRONI can help you flesh out an ancestor's life. They have church records, the 1901 census, wills, national school records, and valuation records, including the famous Griffith’s Valuation.  The church records have the baptisms, marriages and burials before 1864.

On the home page, click on the choice ‘Research Local and Family History.’ (Lower left side with photo) Then click on the highlighted words in paragraph three ‘Your Family Tree series of leaflets’. You will find a list of free pdf files on about 50 topics including ‘Latin Terminology in Roman Catholic Church Records.’ I mention this one because it has translations for Irish/English names not often found on other lists, like Cecil (Caecilius) and Winifred (Winifrida).

However, PRONI is not the place to find Indexes and BMD certificates. Records of events since 1864 are found at the General Register Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI), www.nidirect.gov.uk, 49/55 Chichester Street, Belfast, BT1 4HL. To order a birth certificate online, for example, you will need:

-full name of the child

-date and place of birth

-parents’ names, including the maiden name of the mother

-mother’s address at time of the birth

£14 plus postage

At the GRONI website home page, click on ‘Ordering Certificates’ and follow the instructions.  On the 'Ordering Certificates' main page, click on the phrase ‘Leisure, Home and Community Online’ in the right hand column. A long list should come up with links to other research sites under a subcategory ‘Family and Local History.’ One click will take you to the:

-PRONI Online Records

-PRONI ecatalogue

-National Archives (Kew)

-National Archives of Scotland

-1901 and 1911 Census of Ireland (www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search)

-World War casualties (Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: Uniqueness of Nonconformist Registers

In August of 1969, Donald J. Steel gave a speech titled, “Registers of British Nonconformist Groups as Genealogical Source”, to a conference in Salt Lake City. I found an old mimeographed copy at the Selby Library in Sarasota, Florida last winter. He groups together the Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists and points out that the registers of these sects show:

      1.       members of nonconformist groups came from large areas'

      2.       one minister might serve more than one congregation but keep his records in only one book

      3.       the registers might contain more than just BMD data.

Nonconformists had no geographical constraints. A good preacher or an interesting new philosophy might attract members from a large area.  London chapels often attracted members from all over the city and its nearby suburbs. However, the same phenomena was prevalent in rural areas, sometimes even in places that already had a church of the same denomination.

Methodists and some Baptists used the word ‘church’ for a circuit of several congregations that were individually called ‘meetings’ which leads to Steel’s second point, a minister might keep the records of  his several congregations in one book.  These registers appear to belong to the minister rather than the congregation. Steel gives an example of a Presbyterian minister whose register contains entries from Maidenhead, Berkshire from 1745-1749 and Kings Lynn, Norfolk from 1754 to 1777.

Some registers contained more than just BMD records. If minutes of church meetings or Sunday School attendance was kept in the same register, a congregation might have transcribed only the BMD records to submit to the General Register Office in 1837 or 1858. This might give the usual problems with using transcriptions. If the whole book was turned in, the lists of elders and officers and the other ‘business’ aspects of the chapel could provide unexpected dividends as you read through.

The Methodist church my great grandmother attended in upstate New York after she immigrated had a book that showed baptisms and marriages as well as lists of probationary members and when they were admitted to full membership. She went to a Bible study group, and I found a list of all the members, the leader and where they met.

In the 1700s, “denominational labels tended to be fluid.” For example, Steel feels that the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists often had close relationships so it would be wise to search both registers in an area, if you feel your ancestor belonged to either. Mostly in Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, there were union chapels of Baptists and Congregationalists.

To learn more about nonconformist records, I will repeat the LDS sites from last week at the familysearch.org wiki:

          www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/england_nonconformist_ church_ records                                  

          www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/england_and_wales_nonconformist_index_for_RG_4-8

To view images of nonconformist records, go to www.BMDregisters.co.uk, a pay-per-view site run by www.thegenealogist.co.uk in association with the National Archives.

Source: Steel, Donald J. Registers of British Nonconformist Groups as a Genealogical Source. Manuscript. Salt Lake City: World Conference on Records and Genealogical Seminar, 1969.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday- UK & Ireland Civil Registration

Country	Civil Registration Began*	Records Access
England	1837	The Indexes: The National Archives Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU www.nationalarchives.gov.uk www.freebmd.co.uk www.ancestry.com Order Certificates: General Register Office PO Box 2, Southport Merseyside  PR8 2JD (by mail) www.gro.gov.uk
Wales	1837	Same as above, but also district Registries in Wales. See the Index in person at: National Library of Wales Penglais, Aberystwyth Dyfed 2Y23 3BU www.llgc.org.uk
Scotland	1855	General  Register Office for Scotland New Register House Edinburgh EH1 3YT www.gro-scotland.gov.uk will direct you to: www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
Ireland	1864 From 1845-Present - Protestant Marriage Records	General Register Office of Ireland Irish Life Centre Lower Abbey Street Dublin 1 www.groireland.ie
Northern Ireland	1864 From 1845-Present - Protestant Marriage Records	General Register Office of Northern Ireland Oxford House 49/55 Chichester Street Belfast, BT1 4HL www.nidirect.gov.uk

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

*Civil registration is the government recording of vital records, a U.S. term. In the UK, they are known as BMD certificates.  Civil Registration Indexes list alphabetically all the births, all the marriages and all the deaths in a three month period and the book and page where the certificate can be found.  Before ordering a certificate from the GROs, you need the book and page found in the Index.
Records before the beginning of civil registration were kept by churches and included christenings, marriages and burials.