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  1. #1
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    Smile Best site for online searchable records

    Hi All

    Can anyone recommend the best online site for searching records, especially parish records? I currently use ancestry.com and am also using the Essex Records office online. Counties I may have to search include Suffolk, Cambs, Sussex, Wiltshire, Somerset and Kent. Cheers Fraserb

  2. #2
    Super Moderator - Completely bonkers and will never change.
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    Hello fraserb,

    Welcome to British-Genealogy.

    The simple answer to your question is that there is no one site which will have everything you want.
    It's a question of looking at each of the major sites and seeing what records they hold. So I would say Ancestry, FindMyPast (FMP), The Genealogist, and I think there's another one but it may be BMD Registers I'm thinking of. That site is 'The Official Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial BMDs Service', run in association with The National Archives. Some of those records may also be available on the other sites I've mentioned as well as FamilySearch.

    Some Kent records are available at City Ark - type Medway City Ark into a search engine.
    Some Suffolk PRs are online at FMP.
    Some Sussex burials are on FMP.
    Cambridgeshire seem to be fairly well represented on FMP.

    And, as with Essex, some county Archives/Record Offices are putting their PRs online. Lincolnshire for one.

    A good general starting point is https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/
    Click on the individual county, and then church records. Some counties are extremely well-detailed. Others not quite so much.

    Often what you see are just transcriptions, but you could probably order in the actual films for viewing at the LDS FHC in Wangaratta.

    Don't ignore the publications of the local Family History Societies. A tenner spent on a publication can sometimes spare you wasted hours searching for a non-existent family.
    Sometimes the society has its indexes online in a 'members' area'. Sussex and Norfolk are two of them. And Cambridgeshire used to have limited details online. Worth joining the society for a year.

    Also worth checking are the 'stickies' at the top of the individual counties on BG.

    Scottish and Irish records are a completely different ball game.
    Scottish ones are usually found on Scotlands People. Irish have been notoriously difficult to search but in recent years have become more widely available. Quite a lot on FMP. Don't know about Ancestry.

    Pam
    Vulcan XH558 - “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

  3. #3
    Knowledgeable and helpful warncoort's Avatar
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    Some counties have "Online Parish Clerks" known as OPC,volunteers will do lookups etc.

  4. #4

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    Agreed.
    Also, don't forget Cyndi's list. It doesn't have data itself, but it must be one of the oldest clearing houses for genealogical sites, message boards, mailing lists and other information. Whenever I visit, I find something that I'd forgotten or something I hadn't heard about.

  5. #5
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    Kent
    Parish registers of the Archdeaconry of Rochester are free of charge at CityArk (Medway Archives)

    Parish Registers of East Kent (Archdeaconry of Canterbury) are at Findmypast.

    For the rest of Kent, parish registers are on FamilySearch but are not accessible online unless you're a Mormon or in a Mormon Family History centre.

    For other church and chapel registers (NB not parish registers), see BMDRegisters for the fullest coverage.

    Many online collections are just transcriptions and indexes. You should always check these against the originals before believing them.

    Hundred of Australian genealogists before you have worked by ordering in microfilms of parish registers from the Mormons and searching them locally. Don't ignore tried and trusted methods!

    Records of metropolitan areas of the historical county of Kent are generally in various record offices in Greater London.

  6. #6
    Super Moderator - Completely bonkers and will never change.
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    I forgot to add that some villages and/or individuals have put transcriptions on their websites. So it's always worth using a search engine for specific places.

    There's also the Wayback Machine. https://
    archive.org/ which has lots of books with transcriptions of early parish registers. (1500s onwards.)
    Two similar sites are https://www. gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page and https://www. hathitrust.org/ (remove the space after the www. for the correct url)

    Pam
    Vulcan XH558 - “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

  7. #7
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    Also tried and tested...a collection of Phillimore's marriage transcripts for the counties you're interested in is pretty invaluable. You can buy them on CD. I'm not clear about their availability online.

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