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| Church records are a prime source of information about births, deaths
and marriages that date back further than the national records held by the
Public Records Office. These parish records are important documents and few
if any parishes have the facilities to preserve them properly. Thus they
are seldom actually kept in the parish.
This is the case with Bagshot's records. As for many other parishes in the Diocese, they are held at: Surrey History Centre their website is at www.surreycc.gov.uk/surreyhistoryservice where you can find out about the services they offer and how to access those services. Bagshot parish only goes back to 1874, records earlier than that will be part of Windlesham parish. Surrey Heath Museum has an extensive archive of local information, maps, newspapers and family data that complements the formal records held at Woking. For history about local families or background information about the area contact the museum by phone to ascertain whether they have material relevant to your needs and if relevant to make an appointment to discuss your needs. The museum, incidentally, is free and has a constantly changing programme of themed displays. Surrey Heath Museum Their web site is a part of Surrey Heath Borough Council's. They also advice on tracing your Ancestors If you are 'doing' family history and your family came from Bagshot then you might be interested in the archive disc that records Bagshot as it is today. I am always pleased to hear from people who have a connection with Bagshot. While I am not able to furnish information from old records, I do offer the opportunity to post questions here. Births, marriages and deaths (BMD) After 1837 Births, marriages and deaths have been formally registered since July 1837. Copies of the registration documents are held by the General Register Office (GRO, previously called PRO). They are not available to researchers, but you can buy a copy (£7) if you know what you want. Indexes are produced and these may be referred to. The indexes are prepared each quarter and list all events in alphabetical order. For each name is given the registration district and the volume and page on which the record is held, the date will also be known to 3 months by virtue of what quarter it is in. This is the date on which the event was registered, which, especially in the case of a birth, could be some weeks after the event. The indexes were created manually, so it is not surprising that there are some errors. www.FreeBMD.org.uk is a volunteer project to transcribe the Indexes. Coverage is not 100%. Births and marriages from 1837 to about 1920 are pretty good, deaths rather more patchy. Coverage rapidly runs out after the 1920s. Searches for births and deaths are self evident. You can enter as many, or as few, criteria as you want. Making a marriage search is similarly self evident - the result needs a little more processing. For most years the results will only list one marriage partner, potentially you have to inspect all the possibilities by clicking on the page number. This will display all the entries on that page. Later entries include the spouse's surname so that makes things easier. For most dates there were 2 marriages on each page - thus you get shown the names of two males and two females with no indication who married who - you have to guess or chance your arm and buy a certificate to get the details. Early dates have 3 weddings to a page so there are even more choices. From 1984 the BMD data was collected electronically, so there are no printed indexes. The data includes the mother's maiden name. They can be searched via www.ancestry.co.uk but without paying you don't get much data back. I don't know of a free service. Some local agencies may provide alternative access. One of note is www.bathbmd.org.uk which has obviously been prepared from the records as opposed to the GRO indexes and provides more comprehensive data than is in the indexes (including mother's maiden name). The references numbers it yields are applicable to getting a copy from the Bath Register Office. Before 1837 Before 1837 there was no registration. All there is are Parish Records of baptisms, marriages and burials. Not everyone was baptised, and baptism might be several years after birth. Some clergy annotated baptism records with the age or d.o.b. of the person. Parish Records are now held by County Record Offices, usually on microfilm - not by churches. Copies can be purchased and Family History Societies might well have copies. As well as filling in Parish Records, clergy were required to send a list of all baptisms, marriages and burials to their Bishop each year. These are known as Bishop's Transcripts and may also be available - especially useful for any Parish Records that might have got lost. Nonconformist records are more problematical than C of E. www.freeREG.org.uk is a sister volunteer project to FreeBMD and aims to transcribe Parish Records. It is not yet very comprehensive, but none-the-less always worth trying. www.familysearch.org.uk (LDS - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints a.k.a. Mormons) have a lot of Parish Records and/or Bishops Transcript data in their search engine. They also have data that has been "submitted by a member" - it is as well to check to see the source of any data you find in order to decide how much confidence you want to give it. Many local websites will have Parish Record transcripts in whole or part for their locality - the problem is finding them! The National Burials Index is a collaborative activity by the Federation of Family History Societies. Libraries and local family history societies may have copies. Census data Censuses have been carried out every 10 years since 1841. 1901 is the latest that is accessible. 1841 contains less information about each person than the later ones. The 1881 census has been transcribed by the LDS and is available on www.familysearch.org.uk With it being provided free by them, the 'commercial' service providers provide it for free as well. Coverage of more censuses is provided by the various 'commercial' services including www.ancestry.co.uk www.1901censusonline.com/ www.findmypast.com www.familyhistoryonline.net/ All have different services. All allow you to get some amount of data for free but then you probably need to pay to get complete data - though the free data could be enough to point you in the right direction. We have also found that their census data has been transcribed separately and so contain different errors - which can be useful (not that they contain errors but that if one is wrong another might be right). Local libraries and local family history societies may have a subscription to some of the commercial services. www.freeCEN.org.uk is yet another companion to FreeBMD etc - but has very limited coverage. Other data Other links I've found useful enough to bookmark are
Hope this helps and has not repeated too much of what you knew. I have accumulated this list of genealogy-related web sites from various sourses.
I have been told that the newsgroups soc.genealogy.methods and soc.genealogy.britain can prove useful. One person who has done a lot of research into old family records, many of them local, and published the results on the web is David Hammond. If you are trying to track local names you might just find something on his site. If you can recommend other useful web sources to provide here, I will be pleased to hear about them. |
This page is part of the Bagshot village web site.
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