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Issue 6 > Beginner's Guides > Parish Registers
Dave Annal takes an in-depth look at the registration of our ancestors’ baptisms, marriages and burials over the last five centuries.
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I read Dave Annal's article about parish registers with great interest and learnt a few new things. When talking about searching the parish registers, however, he says that if we can't get to the local record office we may have to pay someone to do the research or use the Family History Centres run by the LDS church. This is excellent advice, but what he doesn't tell us is that we should also contact the family history society local to where the register is kept, because that is where the wealth of local knowledge will be held. In most cases the members will have transcribed those vital registers, which will be more accurate simply because the transcribers are local. Most family history societies have a list of members who are prepared to do research for other members that cannot get to their area, usually for expenses only. Please tell people somewhere in your great magazine that they should go to the website of the Federation of Family History Societies, www.ffhs.org.uk, to see the details of their local society. I will declare my interest in this, as I am Chairman and Editor of the Gwent FHS.
I agree that becoming a member of a family history society is a vital part of your research. Jersey is the home of the Channel Islands Family History Society, which began in 1978 well before the idea of an official archive was contemplated. From its inception, the society has amassed a collection of research material, which includes transcriptions of baptisms, marriages and burials, transcriptions and indexes of censuses and a wealth of other lists etc. These have proved invaluable to researchers as in many cases French was used in the original records and local surnames can be baffling to the novice.
Since Jersey Archive was opened in 2000, the society has housed its collection in that building and it is freely available to researchers with the additional facility of volunteers from the society on duty to help. As much of the original material we used is available to order in the reading room, there is a double benefit for researchers to check the original, should they so wish.