Include parish name in index

ianinthewest

Here is a reference to a baptism in the Manchester area, Lancashire, UK

"England, Lancashire Non-Conformist Church Records, 1647-1996", database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6XZW-YVH6 : 22 April 2022), Dorothy Lilian Currell, 1922.

BUT the information does not include the church/parish/institution where this occurred! Why is that not included? The place of the event would be very useful.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Unfortunately, a lot of recent indexes on FamilySearch have solved the place standardization problem by reducing specificity. You can retrieve some of the information by searching the catalog for the film or image group number, but in the case of multi-part films -- like the one in question -- that can be less than helpful.

If it's any consolation, it could be a lot worse: many of the recently-published Hungarian civil registry indexes have the location as the country. (For example: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6V1G-NPL3.)

Paul W

Many of the records in this collection (and other so-called "Non-conformist" collections for England) include parishes that are not even within the county and are not necessarily non-conformist records, either!

To be fair, in some cases FamilySearch has possibly not been granted permission by the record custodian to index these records in full. However, FamilySearch indexing projects can be handled very sloppily, with reported issues (wrong parish / county, etc.) not being addressed even while a project is still ongoing.

From your example, it appears the event took place within the parish of Lancaster, but as Lancashire and Lancaster were used interchangeably in the past, it is possibly a case of the name being changed (Lancaster to Lancashire) by FamilySearch's auto-standardization program, so discovering the name of the chapel / church / parish will possibly be a difficult task. From my past experience in dealing with this collection (and others), the baptism might have even taken place in another county.

So much for indexed records being meant to act as useful finding aids!

Paul W

I wonder if you have visited the Search page for this collection? The error of this collection in any way relating to the county of Norfolk (as stated) was reported quite some time ago, but this misleading detail still has not been removed from the page.

https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/3656808

Paul W

Here is another example of FamilySearch making it difficult for us to find our relatives' records.

This relates to the image-only England, Manchester, Parish Registers 1603 - 1910 collection. Can anybody tell me what place there should be in this Diocese of Manchester collection for registers of parishes located in the counties of Cheshire and Yorkshire, as well as places in Lancashire that are not within that diocese?

Again, FamilySearch sloppy indexing and post-indexing practices are making it difficult to locate records of ones relatives. Please include them in appropriate collections! They all do appear to relate to the Diocese of Lancaster, but not that of Manchester.