Gloucestershire records on Ancestry

[Wilkes_ml]

Just a warning if you are using the search function to find people in the Gloucestershire parish Registers that have recently been added.

Firstly, the Gloucestershire, England Baptisms, Marriages & Burials 1538-1813 and the Gloucestershire, England Marriages & Banns 1754-1938 should overlap between 1754 and 1813 but marriages during this time period do not always appear in both data sets.

In fact, some marriage registers are not indexed at all in the Gloucestershire, England Marriages & Banns 1754-1938 batch.

For example, the marriages of 2 Charles HARDINGs appear in 1797 and 1799 at St. Mary, Tetbury and come up when searching England Baptisms, Marriages & Burials 1538-1813, but do not come up at all in the Gloucestershire, England Marriages & Banns 1754-1938 batch.

In fact, no Tetbury marriages come up when searching the Gloucestershire, England Marriages & Banns 1754-1938 batch, yet if you go to the "Browse this collection" drop down menu, Tetbury, St. Mary is actually there, and 1778-1812 register is browsable.

I am pretty certain that other batches of baptisms, marriages or burials are also not indexed, so just a reminder that if you can't find someone when searching using the index, it doesn't mean they are not in the registers....somewhere!

[Wilkes_ml]

Also, whoever transcribed the composite registers obviously didn't read the whole entries, as I'm losing count of the number of burials & marriages listed as baptisms in the index!!

[Megan Roberts]

Your message inspired me to see if I could find the baptism of my 3x grandfather James Smith ...

Whilst looking for him I came across this baptism entry (which I don't think is him), but does anyone know what it means? Neither parent is mentioned.

[Peter Goodey]

does anyone know what it means?

Spurious = illegitimate

[Pam Downes]

Also, whoever transcribed the composite registers obviously didn't read the whole entries, as I'm losing count of the number of burials & marriages listed as baptisms in the index!!

Why the surprise? It is Ancestry, after all.

Still haven't forgotten them some years ago with the census indexing people born in Somerset as being born in Somalia!

Pam

[Wilkes_ml]

I shouldn't have been surprised really...too much to expect them to have learnt from previous transcriptions...but you would at least expect them to have someone transcribing who a) knows basic English and b) can read a whole sentence and deduct a name based on all the information in that sentence

I just had to correct Nancy son of ...... I mean, really, I know some names can be unisex nowdays, and some names (like Lettuce ) back then seem a bit odd to us now, but basic names like Nancy & Jane (another one often listed as John) should be obvious.

The census has male/female columns too which should help!

I've also just found a baptism with no surname indexed, yet the original is crystal clear

[Wilkes_ml]

St. Mary, Tetbury Baptisms & burials 1778-1812 also appear to be not indexed...there could be many others.

I've also noticed many of the early registers just have a forname in the index, with a month but no year! Looking at the original, I could easily make out the surname, month and year! The day of the month was written in Roman numerals, but that didn't take much to work out! It does make you wonder who they get to transcribe these documents

[janbooth]

Too true. It's not so bad if the particular family you are researching stay in one parish because you can search through that parish and find them but if not, well in many cases, unless you are extremely lucky, you have little chance of finding them using the Index search. I have corroborated the marriages of quite a few of my lot through searching the Phillimore's Marriage Index and then looking through the particular parish mentioned in that Index as they have not appeared when using Ancestry's search. Again, I agree with Pam that I shouldn't be too surprised at some of the poor transcriptions. When Ancestry first put up the Warwickshire parish registers I was searching for the baptism of my direct ancestor Samuel CASE and was extremely happy when I used Ancestry's search facility and came up with quite a few candidates. However, on looking at the actual parish registers, they were nearly all Samuel, base son of ........ and the word base had been transcribed as the surname CASE!! That said, thanks to the Warwickshire parish registers being online, I did manage to find the baptism of my Samuel CASE and get back a couple more generations which would have been much more difficult for me if I had had to visit Warwick Record Office to look through the microfilms of Warwickshire parishes as I had no idea where he hailed from, only that he ended up in Stratford on Avon.

As Michelle has said, some of the transcriptions on the Gloucestershire Index bear no surname only a forename and yet the surname is perfectly clear on the original. BUT all in all, it is still a great facility to have and saves hours of trawling through parish registers in Gloucestershire Archives leaving me much more time when I do visit the Archives to concentrate on other areas, so I am a happy bunny really!

Janet

[Wilkes_ml]

I'm still a happy bunny too As with the Shropshire records that are now on line it is so much easier to browse through the registers as and when you want in the comfort of your own home, without all the travelling. i also don't get sea sick on a pc, whereas I do on a microfilm reader! I'm used to trawling through neighbouring parish registers in a 10 mile radius, recording every instance of a surname and it variations, to put family groups together, so it is nothing new to me. But I do suspect there are still many people who believe an index to be complete coverage of the dataset, as many people believed the IGI to be complete, and therefore pick a random baptism from a county miles away just because it was the closest in name & year

[janbooth]

Oh, don't get me going on the information in some of the Family Trees on Ancestry, Michelle, or I could have steam coming out of my ears!! One of my particular gripes is that some people never seem to check the burial records and assume that therefore the particular person they have found is the correct one and perpetuate that erroneous information on their Tree which then gets copied a multitude of times and is spread all over the web. Another gripe is that so few people show their sources on the Trees. However, that does tend to highlight the Family Trees which are well researched and show all their sources and I have found a couple of those in my lines which have helped enormously.

Janet