In a message dated 22/08/2007 13:03:02 GMT Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: I have a large family of Tinklers with the first 4 children being born in Staindrop 1799-1806 and the next 5 in Bishop Middleham 1808-1819. My problem is finding anything on their parents Michael Tinkler and Mary Alderson. Can anyone help with births of these two and their marriage which would have been around 1798. David: Your problem should be a simple one. You are lucky in that these people were almost all born, an dpresumably baptised, during the "Barrington period" (1798-1812), when Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham, ordered that all baptism registers within his Diocese should be kept in great detail, resulting in entries rather like the "Dade" ones found in some other parts of England. Amongst the information given is the maiden name of the mother and the name of the parish(es) of which each parent was a native. All you need to do is to access either a microfilm of the original registers (Durham County Record Office: they have a reasonably-priced "look-up" service) or else a copy or a microfilm/fiche of the H M Wood transcripts (Newcastle Central Library or available for purchase on fiche from Northfiche). Other transcripts and indexes will not have this detail. The IGI could be used to confirm the baptism dates and hte mother's maiden surname. It is much to be regretted that Rose's Act came into force on 1 January 1813, creating a uniform regime for the keeping of baptism registers throughout the country. What was a good step forward for most of the country was a great step back for Durham Diocese! Geoff Nicholson