Hello everyone, Here is the latest news item from the Federation. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Northamptonshire records arrive online The first batch of images from Northamptonshire parish registers and bishops transcripts has arrived on the Ancestry website. They relate to the period 1813 to 1912 and include these records, many of the earlier ones being duplicates: · 781,205 Baptisms · 478,523 Burials There are also details of 463 confirmations of people from four parishes. The collections have all been indexed, so they can be searched and individual images downloaded in the ways already familiar to Ancestry users. A browse facility allows you to select a specific parish, choose between parish registers and bishops transcripts (if both are available) and proceed page by page as though you were looking through the original records. Some key uses of the collections are: · Locating vital events before the advent of civil registration in July 1837 – and later ones that you cannot find in civil registration indexes. · Identifying children who did not live long enough to appear in a census (the alternative being to buy expensive civil registration certificates). · The opportunity to check alternative sources, even where a record has been found. However, parish registers and bishops transcripts do not supply a complete roll call of births and deaths that took place in the county during the century starting 1813. Points to bear In mind are: · The practice of submitting bishops transcripts tended to die out in the latter part of the 19th century – about half of the parishes in Northamptonshire ceased to send in returns at some stage between 1865 and 1880. Therefore, many events are recorded twice in the earlier decades, but considerably fewer as time goes by. For some places and years, parish registers are not available either. · Northamptonshire was a hot-bed of nonconformity, where many children were not christened in the Church of England. · Cemeteries were established in Northampton and elsewhere in the county from 1847 onwards. Their burials do not appear in parish registers. As with most family history sources, it is great to have this data so readily available – but think about how you interpret it. Francis Howcutt FFHS Archives Liaison archives.liaison@ffhs.org.uk 24 February 2015 -------------------------------------------------------------------- >From Peter Copsey – your Fed Rep