Strays Index

[BeeE586]

I did not wish to impose on the thread started by Martin, and which I have only recently discovered, but is there online a Strays Index ?

Time was before the internet when every Family History Society had a Strays Co-ordinator who collected stray events within their own area and sent them to the Federation of FHS which acted as a clearing house and passed them on to the relevant county co-ordinator. I acted in this capacity for the Nottinghamshire FHS for about seven years in the Eighties, and several volumes of Strays in book form were published.

By far the largest number were from census, but also from registers, Parish Chest material, Apprenticeship registers, MI's newspaper announcements - whatever. Much of the need for such publications has gone with regard to Census, but there are centuries before 1841 when if you 'lose' a family you have absolutely no idea where to look.

Perhaps the FFHS still operate a Clearing House policy, I don't know; perhaps there is an index somewhere - again I don't know- but if there is not, and Martin or someone else would like to take it on, an index of pre 1837 strays would be useful.

Earlier this year I began a project of my own, extracting stray marriage details from the CD of Nottinghamshire Marriage Licences and was astonished to find just how many there are and of what complexity. Couples from two totally different counties marrying in Notts. - how would you ever find that without help ? This project has been temporarily abandoned because of my accident but I will get back to it and pass on the information to the relevant counties, or to anyone else who might like to build up such an index.

Eileen

[BeeE586]

I have just answered my own question - FFHS no longer collect and distribute strays. I found this out in a roundabout way through a link from another site.

The reason given is that Census can now be searched on the internet, fine, but pre census and GR strays are not so easily found and there would still seem to be a need for some sort of recording.

Eileen

[Colin Moretti]

Hello Eileen

Rootsweb has a Strays mailing list but it is very rarely used - there have only been 8 posts in the last 4 years. Some Online Parish Clerks have contributions of strays, usually similar to the project you mentioned in your first post, I have found some on the Dorset OPC site for example. It's a pity that the FreeREG search engine doesn't allow searches on the place of residence where it differs from the parish where the event was recorded - that would probably be a very good way of picking up strays.

Colin

[Sue Mackay]

And of course strays can be put on this forum if you find them!

I have been putting strays on here from my transcriptions of South African newspapers, if a specific UK place of origin is mentioned. Even if strays repositories such as this one are not yet that comprehensive, the very fact that they are on-line means they will be picked up by Google. I have already been contacted by two people who could 'claim' strays I put on here, who had no idea they went to the Cape.