Please a Parish Name

LegacyUser

Betty Hook said: Could someone explain why Family search are not transcribing the name of the parish with baptism records, only giving the County in the UK.
This is definitely not helping find the right person or family.
Also feel this makes mistakes when people merging, could we please return to the old ways, sometimes they are best!!

LegacyUser

Paul said: Betty

I am inclined to believe this must relate to the terms and conditions of the contract made with the record custodian, rather than carelessness or project instructions relating to the indexed batch.

I am encountering this problem at the moment with my Essex relatives. Sources have recently appeared as record hints on their pages. In general, I find I have already found / inputted the detail, but whilst the event date usually matches, I have entered the actual parish, but the FamilySearch record usually (though, strangely, not always) leaves the parish out. However, this COULD relate to the fact that the record incumbent (probably the local vicar) has registered their objection to this detail being included.

Another factor I have found is where the original record is found in a collection of Bishop's Transcripts. In the case of the county of Norfolk, one microfilm usually contains records for a particular year, but for hundreds of parishes, arranged in alphabetical order. When I have checked the originals I have often found the parish name (nearly always shown at the top of the page) to be totally illegible. In this example (Norfolk BTs) I believe project instructions WERE probably to omit the parish name. Unfortunately, many records were indexed as "Norwich" instead of "Norfolk", as the two main Norfolk jurisdictions are the Archdeaconry of Norwich and the Archdeaconry Of Norfolk. However, the impression often given is that the event took place in the city of Norwich!

The ability to dictate what records (or parts thereof) are displayed as falling right back to the local vicar is illustrated by the individual parish records found in the main Norfolk Parish Records collection in FamilySearch. Many of these suddenly vanished altogether some two or three years ago. I was advised this probably related to certain local vicars being unhappy at finding records of "their" churches were being displayed on FamilySearch and asking (as was / is within their rights) for the withdrawal of such material.

In summary, whilst this is exasperating ("but WHERE in Essex / Norfolk?" I find myself shouting!) there is probably either a contractual, or otherwise understandable reason (parish illegible, for example) for this practice.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Thinking further on the general issue, I just remembered that I have come across this problem in Find My Past, too. In that case, the records were from the collection of a local family history society. Either the society specifically withheld permission for FMP to display the parish name, so researchers would have to get this information from them (possibly for a fee) or this was due to how they had indexed their records. In original booklets containing indexes, there is often no full parish name against the indexed name / date of event, but just a code (like MWM or BWM). In these cases, details of the relating full parish name is only to be found on a page at the beginning of the booklet.

So, conditions imposed by the provider / custodian of the material, as well as commercial or other considerations can all be involved where full details are not being displayed (by FamilySearch or other organisations).