What were Bishop's Transcripts?

Shortly after the establishment of the Church of England, a law was passed which required parish priests to record all the baptisms, marriages, and burials that they officiated each year. These records, called registers, were supposed to have started in 1538, although this is not consistent throughout England.

From 1598, every parish priest of the Church of England was supposed to make a copy of his parish register and send it to the archdeacon or bishop every year. Generally referred to as Bishop’s Transcripts, these copies were generally produced in the same form as a regular parish register. 

As bishop’s transcripts generally contain more or less the same information as parish registers, they are an invaluable resource when the original parish register has been damaged, destroyed, or otherwise lost. Bishop's transcripts can also be of value even when parish registers exist, as priests often recorded either additional or different information in their transcripts than they did in the original registers. Most bishop's transcripts before 1812 were recorded on blank sheets, and then on pre-printed forms from around 1813 onwards. Many priests stopped producing these transcripts with the beginning of civil registration in 1837, but some persisted even into the twentieth century.

It should be noted that many bishop's transcripts may not be available during the Interregnum, 1642-1660. During this period, the hierarchy of the Church of England was disrupted, leading to a lapse in record-keeping and communication in some dioceses.

In general, transcripts contain records of the following events:

• Baptism often called "christening" in Anglican usage, is the initial rite by which an individual is received into the community of faith within the Church of England. This rite is normally undertaken shortly after birth, though it may follow weeks or even months later.  Some were years later, or even adult baptisms, and it is not unheard of for several siblings of varying ages to be baptised together.
• Marriage sometimes listed as "weddings". From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, couples usually (but not always) married in the bride's parish.
• Burial has historically occurred within a few days of death. Until the late nineteenth century, burial registers record many nonconformists, as nonconformists were often buried in Anglican churchyards when cemeteries belonging to their sects were not available.

 In many online databases, Bishop's Transcripts will be marked BT.

 

GRO Increases Certificate Prices

If you are looking to order civil registration records from the General Register Office (GRO), be aware they have increased the price of their records.

The GRO, which holds civil birth, marriage and death records for England and Wales, holds records from 1837, when civil registration was introduced.

Previously, the prices were:

• £2.50 for a digital image (available to download instantly for births from 1837 to 1922 and deaths from 1837 to 1957).
• £7 for a PDF (available for births from 1837 to 1934 and 1984 to 2021 and deaths from 1837 to 1957 and 1984 to 2021, takes up to four working days to despatch).
• £11 for a print certificate with an index reference (includes all marriage certificates).
• £14 for a print certificate without an index reference.

The new prices are:

• £3 for a digital image.
• £8 for a PDF.
• £12.50 for a print certificate with an index reference.
• £16 for a print certificate without an index reference.

Civil registration records are still a vital source of information for family historians, so be aware of these price increases the next time you are planning to order.

 

New English and Welsh Death Records Online

The General Register Office (GRO) has updated its online index to cover all deaths registered in England and Wales from 1984 to 2019.
The minimum information required for searching the index is the deceased’s surname, gender and year of death within two years. The free indexed entries give their full name, year of birth, registration district and GRO reference number. You can then order a full certificate online at a standard cost of £11.

Previously the GRO’s death index only covered the years 1837 to 1957. The new addition will still leave a gap of 27 years in the index, although deaths up to 2007 can be searched on other family history websites.

Victorian BMDs Discounted

The Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages Victoria has a special offer available for Family History Month.  For August only, you can order their downloadable uncertified historical certificates for just $20.

This includes :

• Births 1853 to 100 years before today's date
• Marriages 1853 to 60 years before today's date
• Deaths 1853 to 30 years before today's date
• Church baptisms, marriages and burials 1836-1853

Uncertified historical certificates are not valid for official purposes but are a scanned copy of the official record that can be downloaded to your computer.  So if you have Victorian ancestors whose certificates you haven't ordered, this month might be a good time to get your copies of them.

GRO England and Wales extends PDF Pilot

The GRO of England and Wales has been piloting a service providing PDF copies of historical birth and death records. The pilot, originally extended to July 2018, has now been extended further to continue to assess longer term demand and there is no planned end date at this time.  Currently the service does not cover marriage records at all.

Applications for PDF’s cost £6, must be made online and include a GRO index reference. England and Wales records available in this extended pilot include:

• Births: 1837 –1917
• Deaths: 1837 –1957

Victorian Birth, Death and Marriage indexes

For those of you who (like me) missed the news, the Index to Victorian births, deaths and marriages has been updated at the start of the year and you can now search for marriages up to 1950. That’s 8 years of additional marriages.  Births have also been extended by a year.
The Index to Victorian births, deaths and marriages now covers:

• births in Victoria from 1853 to 1917
• marriages in Victoria from 1853 to 1950
• deaths in Victoria from 1853 to 1988
• church baptisms, marriages and burials in Victoria from 1836 to 1853

Each entry includes the:

• name of the person or people the entry relates to
• type of event (such as birth, marriage or death)
• registration year
• registration number
• other information relevant to the type of event.

General Register Office PDF Pilot

Have you been ordering birth and death certificates online from England and Wales via the General Register Office (GRO)?  It has just been confirmed that the latest pilot scheme to deliver PDF copies of birth and death records has been a success and will be extended.

Over 79,600 PDF applications had been processed in the three months from the introduction of the pilot on 12 October 2017.  The GRO previously conducted a three-phase PDF pilot between November 2016 and April 2017, but has yet to establish a permanent PDF scheme.  As a result of this popularity and positive feedback, the pilot scheme has now been extended past the minimum three month period.  The scheme applies to births from 1837 to 1916 and deaths from 1837 to 1957, but (sadly) excludes marriage records.

By allowing family historians to order digital copies of records at £6 each with a 5-working day delivery period, it provides a cheaper and quicker alternative to ordering print copies, which cost £9.25 each or £23.40 for priority deliveries.

Personally, I have been taking advantage of this new service quite a bit over the past several months and have had a very positive experience.  All certificates have arrive quickly, and all but one have been correct.  For the one that wasn't right, I simply emailed the GRO pointing out the error (they had supplied the wrong certificate) and the correct certificate arrived within a few days, at no extra cost.  I'll be ordering a few more certificates shortly, and am hoping they will extend the pilot to include marriage certificates soon.

England and Wales GRO Online Trial

The General Register Office (GRO) is piloting another scheme allowing researchers to order birth and death records as PDFs.
From 12th October the digital records will be available to order via the GRO website for £6 each for the next three months, a cheaper alternative to ordering print certificates, which cost £9.25 each or £23.40 for priority certificates.
GRO, which has run three previous pilot PDF schemes, said the scheme would run for a minimum of three months to allow it to “assess the demand for this service over a prolonged period”.
The scheme applies to birth certificates from 1837 to 1916 and death certificates from 1837 to 1957.  Marriage certificates are not available through this trial.
The records will not be immediately viewable, but are sent directly to your email address.  If you are using the GRO site for the first time you will need to complete their registration process.  Remember searching their online indexes is free.

General Register Office for England and Wales Online Trial

The General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO) is trialling a new online system that enables researchers to access digital copies of civil registration records for the first time.
The trial, which began on Wednesday 9th November, currently allows users to order PDF versions of the following records:

• Births: 1837-1934 and 2007 onwards
• Deaths: 1837-1957 and 2007 onwards
• Marriages: 2011 onwards
• Civil partnerships: 2005 onwards 

The records – costing £6 each – will not be immediately viewable, but sent directly to the customer’s email address.  If you are using the GRO site for the first time you will need to complete their registration process.  Remember searching their online indexes is free.
This process is estimated to take around five working days and the trial will end on Wednesday 30 November, or when 45,000 PDFs have been ordered - so get in quickly and order those records you want and have put off because of the expense.

Irish Birth, Death and Marriage Records Online

Doe you have Irish ancestry?  Then there is some good news for you!  Millions of Irish civil registration records have been released online free of charge via IrishGenealogy.ie, providing details about births, marriages and deaths registered in the country dating back to the mid-19th century.
While basic indexes to the records have been available through the state-run genealogy site for some time, users can now view scans of the full register entries online, meaning we can access information previously only seen when we paid to order a certificate.
Due to privacy restrictions, birth records from the past 100 years, marriage records from the past 75 years and death records from the past 50 years are not available.  According to the website, the years covered by the release of the historic records of Births, Marriages and Deaths are:
Births: 1864 to 1915
Marriages: 1882 to 1940
Deaths: 1891 to 1965
They also note that the General Register Office are currently working on updating further records of Marriages dating back to 1845 and Deaths dating back to 1864.  These will be included in future updates to the website.

Victorian Birth, Death and Marriage Certificates

Hate waiting for BMD certificates you have ordered to make their slow way to you in the post?  Wait no more.  Did you know that the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria allows you to download certificates from their Historical Indexes on the spot?  A Historical Image is a scanned image of the original registration record which cannot be used for official purposes. Download purchased images to your computer at a cost of $24 per image.  Historical Death Certificates, which are a certified copy of the original registration record and can be used for official purposes, can still be purchased in hard copy form to be posted to you at a cost of $31 per certificate.

The Historical index has entries relating to:

• births in Victoria from 1853 to 1914
• marriages in Victoria from 1853 to 1942
• deaths in Victoria from 1853 to 1988
• church baptisms, marriages and burials in Victoria from 1836 to 1853

Each entry includes the:

• name of the person or people the entry relates to
• type of event (such as birth, marriage or death)
• registration year
• registration number
• other information relevant to the type of event.

FreeREG

Have you checked out the new FreeREG website??  The new upgrade was launched in April - yes, its taken me a while to find out about it.  Better late than never.  The database contains some 35 million records and is constantly growing, as volunteers upload more records.
The website states "Our objective is to provide free Internet searches of baptism, marriage, and burial records, which have been extracted from parish registers and non-conformist church records in the UK. The recording of baptisms, marriages and burials in parish registers began in England in 1538 and is separate and distinct from the civil registration process that began in 1837. (The latter is covered by our companion project FreeBMD) Our aim is to make it easier for researchers, no matter where they are in the world, to locate a specific record relating to their ancestor within a parish register."
While the site does not publish transcriptions, it is a great resource for tracking down where your relevant records are located, and the new interface is clear, concise and easy to use. Well done!  A great resource - I have happily updated my bookmark.

New German records at Ancestry

 Ancestry has added some 1.7 million birth records, some 2 million marriage records and some 1.8 million death records from Berlin. These records cover the years from 1874 to 1920 (1874 to 1899 for the birth records). The collections can be searched by first name, last name and location. Since the records are in German, Ancestry suggests you make sure you use the correct German spellings.
In the city of Berlin, 13 registry offices began work when the Prussian law from March 9, 1874, the "Gesetz über die Beurkundung des Personenstandes und die Form der Eheschließung," concerning the registration of civil status and marriage went into effect on October 1, 1874.
The collection also contain the civil registers of births, marriages and deaths from cities and communities in the Teltow, Niederbarnim and Osthavelland rural districts in Brandenburg, which were later incorporated into greater Berlin starting October 1, 1920.
Ancestry can be searched free of charge in all branches of Campaspe Regional Library.

Change to English Marriage Certificates

David Cameron has announced that mothers’ names will be added to marriage certificates in England and Wales. Speaking to the Relationships Alliance on Tuesday (19 August), the Prime Minister said that the current system of only recording fathers “[did not] reflect modern Britain” and that he has asked the Home Office to address the situation. The announcement signals a victory for a major online campaign on Change.org that has been signed by over 70,000 supporters, including family historians.

52 Weeks of Genealogy - Week 15 - Civil Registration and Certificates

We are now up to Week 15 of Shauna Hicks's 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records, and I am finally catching up.  Of course, this means I need to go back and fill in the first few topics I missed because I started late! 
Introducing the topic, Shauna tells us that the introduction of civil registration of births, deaths and marriages was a real plus for family history as certificates can give us those vital clues for moving back through the generations. Of course dates when registration was introduced and standard information on certificates varies from country to country but we really cannot confirm our research without these documents.
Birth certificates give us information on the parents and where they were from, marriage certificates also give us information on the parents and death certificates are particularly useful for telling us how long someone was in the colony or state if they an immigrant. 
Unfortunately certificates vary in detail and authority, especially death certificates.  Birth and marriage certificates are usually more reliable as the information they contain was supplied by the people concerned (although if they had something to hide they may have stretched the truth), but who supplied the information you find on a death certificate??  Having recently lost my father, I was the family member who filled in many of the details about his life (I'm fairly certain I got it all correct).  This got me thinking about who may have supplied the information on the older death certificates I have - the only thing you can be certain of is that it was not the person most concerned!  Was the informant their spouse, their sibling, their child?  Or an officiating doctor who had never met the deceased before assisted by nosy Mabel from across the road?  I have a few very disappointing death certificates with little or no information about the person's background, and one I know for certain contains totally incorrect information, which sent me off on quite a wild goose chase.
The cost of certificates can be expensive but digital images are often cheaper so make sure you look at what options are available.  Don't let the cost deter you from a valuable potential source of information.
If you have a brick wall then certificates may be very useful. Try looking at certificates for siblings if you cannot track a direct ancestor.  Find names of children on a death certificate.  Check the witnesses on a marriage certificate as they may be family members - if not parents then aunts and uncles, cousins, siblings.  Check if timelines and places fit with known family movements, see if occupations follow through families and generations. 
Thanks Shauna - this week's topic has sent me back to look at some of my certificates again to see if there is any details I have missed.

FamilySearch

FamilySearch has created a massive new collection of indexes for births, marriages and deaths that cover England and Wales from 1837 to 1920. In total, there are 65.6 million births listed, 35.1 million marriages, and 40.6 million deaths. Note these are indexes and not complete records. These indexes will, however, point you to the exact location of the record. Access is free.  Either search the full FamilySearch site or access each index individually - UK Birth Index, UK Marriage Index and UK Death Index.  Other new FamilySearch collections include the Catholic Church records from the district of Santarém, Portugal. The collection now consists of some 650,000 images of baptism, marriage and death records spanning the years from 1544 to 1911. The images can be searched by municipality, parish, type of record and year.  Another recent addition is approximately 100,000 civil marriages from Denmark that span the years from 1851 to 1961. These records can be searched by first and last name. The records cover the small percentage of people who did not get married in the state church.

Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight Family History Society has been steadily adding to their collection of free genealogy records. So far, there are some 256,000 birth records, 102,000 marriage records and 226,000 death records. The records span the years from 1837 to 2010. There is also a project in place to add all recent deaths since 2010. A typical record on the website will provide the full name, year and place plus additional information. Also included is a very handy link to apply to the island registrar for an official certificate of the record with all the pertinent details automatically completed on the form. Access to the database is free.

London marriage licences, 1521-1869

The book of London marriage licences, 1521-1869, has been digitally scanned and is available online via the Internet Archive.  Contributed by the University of California Libraries, the book can be read online or downloaded in a number of formats, including PDF, Kindle, and EPub.  It is an alphabetical index by husband's surname, with an index of matches for the female partner included at the back, and is 866 pages in length.
Examply entry :
Mason, Stephen, of St Bennett, Gracechurch, London, Merchant, bachelor, about 26 and Mrs Sarah Woolrich, of Bartholomew Close, London, Spinster, about 25, her father' consent - at Barrett, co Herts.  18 June 1677. V.

Church of Ireland Records

The Church of Ireland has put online parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials for the parish of Delgany (Glendalough) and vicinity in North Wicklow. The records (together with an index of names) span the years 1666 to 1900. Access is free. The complete Delgany parish registers can also be conveniently downloaded as a pdf.

Free BMD

FreeBMD is an ongoing project, the aim of which is to transcribe the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales, and to provide free Internet access to the transcribed records.  The FreeBMD Database currently contains 214,279,072 distinct records.  While not complete the site, and its sister sites FreeCEN (Census data) and FreeREG (Parish Registers) are well worth checking.