Cannot Locate Middlesex baptism on FS (research assist)
Hi Friends,
I'm currently researching a family based in Staines, Middlesex, England and I'm having trouble locating a baptism record I know exists.
The individual in question is Martha Osmon (variations Osman/Osmond/O'mond) bapt 1803 Staines, Middlesex, England. I don't know her parentage - that is specifically what I'm trying to learn from the baptism record.
I have tried general record searches and specific searches under England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975, England and Wales Non-Conformist Record Indexes (RG4-8), 1588-1977, Great Britain, Births and Baptisms, 1571-1977 and England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539-1988 all without luck. I also tried doing a search by location for Staines baptisms and trawled through the results incase there was a spelling error in her name, but still no luck.
Looking at the research wiki for Staines it suggests records are available on FamilySearch and I was under the impression that Middlesex coverage on FS was pretty complete, or at least very comprehensive, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Is anyone aware of if access permissions have changed and that may be why it's not showing up?
I have been able to locate a matching search result on Find My Past (Middlesex baptisms) and three possible matches on Ancestry (London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812). Though I don't currently have full access to either, so I cannot view the actual record entries on either site.
If anyone has any insight into why I can't locate the record on FS, or perhaps even has access to the records via a Research Centre and can furnish me with the baptism details, I'd be grateful.
Many thanks.
Best Answer
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Good morning @RaniM
There are 3 versions of Martha Osmon's baptism available on Ancestry, all Provided in association with London Metropolitan Archives.
The extracts of 2 versions place her baptism in St Mary, Staines, England, while the 3rd puts it in St Mary, Staines, Surrey, England.
Her parents are listed as Richard and Mary Osmon.
Ancestry is not particularly good about noting when a record is the parish register or a Bishop's Transcript, but these are definitely 3 different images, although 2 are different pages in the same register. The Ancestry share link does not work as well as it once did, but you'll be able to view some of the details at: https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/10259706?mark=7b22746f6b656e223a2268355932566b66484a7975625a456250354c30634e6d6a634545654e426e736e566a4f6d6965484562596b3d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d
Good luck with the research.
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Answers
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@RaniM asked:
"... I have been able to locate a matching search result on Find My Past (Middlesex baptisms) and three possible matches on Ancestry (London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812). Though I don't currently have full access to either, so I cannot view the actual record entries on either site.
"If anyone has any insight into why I can't locate the record on FS ..."
Just to add to what @Áine Ní Donnghaile said...
FMP: The entry in FMP's Middlesex baptisms is cited as "Transcriptions © Cliff Webb", so there's little chance of that being on FamilySearch.
Ancestry: Staines parish is mostly in Middlesex but parts appear to be in Surrey - see https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/MDX/Staines
As Áine said, two of the Ancestry images come from the same register - Ancestry doesn't tell us whether these are parish registers (PRs) or Bishops' Transcripts (BTs) but makes us work for it. They tell us the London Met Archives catalogue references and when I put those into the LMA catalogue, the "register" with the pair of images is catalogued as Bishops' Transcripts and the other one is the PR proper. As for why there are 2 images (sorry, but I got interested in this!) it's actually an artefact of the way they were filmed. Clearly(?) the sheet of paper for the BT was very wide so it was photographed multiple times, in bits, with lots of overlap - hence the same entry for Martha is in two images.
As for FS...
I tried to find church records for Staines in the FS Catalogue, searching by place, but FS don't appear to have Church of England parish registers for Staines. I've looked at the FS Wiki for Staines, tried to understand that entry in the light of the apparent lack of PRs etc, and concluded that, basically, the Wiki's detail is pretty worthless. 😯
This is a terrible shame because many of those Wiki entries were hugely valuable. Whether the work required to keep them up just got too much, I don't know, but when this one says "FamilySearch Collections-Middlesex - Index & Images for 1500s to 1900s", it seems to be referring only to Middlesex as a whole. It does say "Individual parish coverage for databases in this table are inconsistent and should be verified" but it's far from clear to me what that means in practice - maybe they just copied the same Middlesex entry to all parishes in the county???
So I think the summary is that Staines records for the Church of England are not in FamilySearch.
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maybe they just copied the same Middlesex entry to all parishes in the county???
In many cases, yes. There are boilerplate templates that then can be edited by Wiki contributors. If there are no active contributors for an area, then no edit.
And this info from Tinstaafl: http://www.tinstaafl.co.uk/eandwhmi/middlesex/church%20pages/staines.html
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On the WikiTree forum, I learned a way to get Ancestry sharing links to be actually useful: right-click the image and tell it to open in a new tab, then edit the URL on that new tab to remove the "&maxWidth=520" part from the end.
Zooming in to that, it's almost too big; I can't get the full line on my screen.
The missing bit is the date at the beginning: 8th. -- Martha, Daughter of Richard and Mary Osmon.
As for why FS's search isn't coughing it up, perhaps the location has been so badly mangled in their version of the index that it doesn't match what you're using as your search term? Have you tried searching specific films (image groups) instead of specifying a location? Of course, for that it'd be useful to know what document the Ancestry record comes from, but as Áine says, it's difficult to get that site to divulge such information.
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Thanks for the tip about the Share link, @Julia Szent-Györgyi
When a record on Ancestry comes directly from a FamilySearch digitized microfilm, the DGS/Film number is often listed. It is not in this case - just the London Archives reference.
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Possibly-relevant FS Catalog page: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/306692?availability=Family%20History%20Library
However, Search doesn't turn up any of the people I tried from the Ancestry image, so it must come from a different register or church.
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That's for an independent chapel - IOW not CofE.
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Hmmm. My problem is that the boilerplate appears to be misleading, as it conveys the impression that Staines is available when it isn't. Saying that it "should be verified" is a set of weasel words. The whole point of coming to the Wiki is to find out what's available - where (speaking rhetorically) am I to verify the entry?
I don't have a problem with boilerplate text - but it shouldn't mislead. The word "Unknown" would surely be far better...
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😉Didn't say it was a good idea.
I first ran into it years ago when I noticed that every county in a certain US state had exactly the same information. Boilerplate with no value. The Wiki has gotten better since then, but it still has a long way to go. It's not my go-to for information.
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Thank you all so much for your helpful and very insightful assistance. I'm immensely grateful to you all for being so generous with your time and knowledge, you've really all gone above and beyond what I could ever have hoped. I'm so glad to finally have that knowledge of Martha's birth and parentage, thank you all so much for taking the time to do those lookups for me!
The question of Staines jurisdiction is an interesting one and explains why some records place it in Middlesex and some in Surrey. The town itself (what is modern day Staines-Upon-Thames) sits on both sides of the River Thames which is effectively the historic divide between Surrey and Middlesex. The parish church (St Mary's) however sits on the Middlesex side of the river and so, technically, the parish of Staines historically fell within the county of Middlesex, whilst the half of the town that sits on the Surrey side of the river fell within the parish of Egham, Surrey. But of course boundary lines have a way of ebbing and flowing over the decades. It gets more complicated when you also consider the Civil Registration District of Staines which covers the entire town and surrounds on both sides of the Thames, as does the Poor Law Union.
Considering all that, it is VERY interesting to me that the original PR lists Staines as being in Surrey. I wonder if that's a reflection of a change in record keeping after the parish was transferred to Surrey in 1965 as @Áine Ní Donnghaile pointed out via Tinstaafl (I wasn't aware of that resource, very useful! Thanks!) .
@Adrian Bruce1 said:
"...sorry, but I got interested in this!"
I'm so glad you did! You had all the same questions I had about what appeared to be duplicate records and solved the mystery with far more alacrity than I would have managed. Thank you. The multi-scan makes a lot of sense.
@Julia Szent-Györgyi said:
"On the WikiTree forum, I learned a way to get Ancestry sharing links to be actually useful"
This is such a good hack, thank you for sharing!
"...Have you tried searching specific films..."
I haven't. I admit I'm not particularly fluent in searching films directly. But in this case, based on what Áine has said about a film number not being listed on Ancestry it likely it wouldn't be very fruitful.
Doing a record search by place and year (1803) and filtering by record type (baptisms) brought up 85 England and Wales Non-Conformist Record Indexes (RG4-8), 1588-1977 results, and 23 England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 results, which seem to be dups of the non-conformist records. Based on what everyone is saying here, in addition to my own research, it seems conclusive that FS don't hold any CofE records for Staines parish.
"My problem is that the boilerplate appears to be misleading, as it conveys the impression that Staines is available when it isn't."
This! I agree @Adrian Bruce1! It's frustrating because the Wikis can be very useful for a quick overview of information. But if the record list for each parish is just a boilerplate across the entire county it seems almost pointless to have individual parish pages when they don't contain parish specific information.
Obviously ongoing licensing changes etc can make updating numerous wiki pages laborious. But it would be eminently helpful to have a page listing the specifics of all available record sets on FamilySearch, which could be updated as licensing agreements changed, thus remaining current. It would eliminate a lot of guess work.
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