This week has been interesting just based on the fact that there have been some interesting new resources added to the Web to help genealogists in gathering data for their family research. Read further for more details.
The following article is from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2007 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author. Information about the newsletter is available at http://www.eogn.com.
The National Burial Index (NBI) for England and Wales is is an index to help family historians find burial records. It is an ongoing project devised and orchestrated by the Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS). The burial records date back to 1538, the year that Henry VIII was excommunicated from the Catholic Church, up to 1837, the date when civil registration began.
These records come from different types of sources: parish registers, bishop’s transcripts (the copies of the original registers made each year for the bishop of the diocese in which they are situated), earlier transcripts or printed registers. Please note that the NBI for England and Wales does not contain memorial inscription records (MIs).
Note that this is an index; the results you are presented with will not contain images at the present time.
The records that have been transcribed to date are now available (for a fee) at FindMyPast.com at http://www.findmypast.com/national-burial-index-search-start.action?redef=0.
BT is putting its entire archive of old phone books online for genealogists, or anyone else, to browse. The phone books date back to 1880 and contain 280 million names. They can be used to track down relatives, but you can also use the service to find out if your house has ever had any famous, or infamous, residents.
The first phone book contained 248 names but no numbers – callers were expected to call the operator to get connected.
All books before BT’s privatisation are public records. The service is available through http://www.ancestry.co.uk.
A new web site offers online tutorials in paleography (the study of old handwriting) for historians, genealogists, and other researchers who have problems reading records written in Scotland in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. ScottishHandwriting.com provides online interactive tutorials and weekly posers to help you study the characteristics of Scottish handwriting. The emphasis of the web site is on practical help to improve the paleographic skills, rather than on the academic study of Scottish handwriting.
The online tutorials are well thought out. The information is presented in small lessons, followed by images of typical Scottish handwriting. Below each image there is a test in the form of a “fill in the blanks” quiz. At the end of each “quiz,” you can click on a link to see the correct answers and thereby grade yourself.
The site also has numerous hints about spelling in past years and commonly-used words that may now be rare. For instance, you might find the word “cephering,” which today would be spelled as “ciphering.” It refers to bookkeeping and arithmetic using Arabic numerals in place of the earlier Roman numerals.
Best of all, ScottishHandwriting.com is available free of charge. You can start learning right now at http://ScottishHandwriting.com.
Almost three centuries of records from one of Nova Scotia’s oldest churches can now be researched, thanks to a massive multi-year effort by dedicated volunteers and the summer-long attention of a professional archivist.
“We’re thrilled out of our minds, but the whole process takes an awfully long time,” said Fiona Day, a member of the archives committee of St. Paul’s Anglican Church on Halifax’s Grand Parade.
The committee began 10 years ago to catalogue the church’s records, which were disorganized and improperly stored after their removal from the parish hall just before that Argyle Street building was demolished in the 1970s.
The group of parishioners soon discovered the historic significance of the dusty old documents and fragile register books, which date back to a baptism and a burial on June 1, 1749, when Edward Cornwallis arrived in Halifax aboard the ship Sphinx.
You can read more about this new offering in an article written by Monica Graham in the (Halifax) Chronicle Herald at http://thechronicleherald.ca/Religion/994047.html.
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