Trace your
family fortunes with Church of England's latest web development. A new
web portal brings together a powerful range of sources to help family
historians. The Church of England has today (18.8.06) launched a new
area on its website to assist the thousands of people currently trying
to trace the branches of their family tree.
The move reflects the huge popularity of research into family history:
when the 1901 Census was placed online in 2002 it soon became one of the
most visited sites on the web, and more than 829,000 people have visited
The National Archive's Family Records Centres in London and Kew in the
last three years. The Church's dedicated web area brings together links
to a range of sources for tracing family histories - including the
Lambeth Palace Library - and provides contact points for archives and
repositories up and down the land.
For many years, the Church has been a natural point of information for
those seeking information on their family history because of its wealth
of written records of baptisms, weddings and funerals, as well as
details of the placement of clergy across the country. "These
Anglican records can be a great source for those embarking on tracing
their family tree," says Declan Kelly, Director of Libraries and
Archives for the Church of England.
"Local clergy are often approached by people seeking access to the
church's registers, but in many instances the records that they are
after have been moved elsewhere. We hope that the new guidance will
enable people to visit a single point for information on how the Church
of England can help them research their ancestors' past lives,"
adds Declan.
The Church of England's new pages explain that prior to 1837 there was
no central registration of births, marriages and deaths in England, and
therefore parish registers are the main source of information for
establishing the facts of such events during this period. These
registers, along with 'Bishops transcripts' which can help fill in the
gaps, are usually held in local or county record offices, but parish
registers are sometimes still held by local parish churches. The pages
point researchers to sources that can help identify where these records
may now be held.
After 1837, when centralised records began to be kept, the Church still
maintained records of births, marriages and funerals, and the pages
sketch out how researchers might go about exploring this history.
The pages can be accessed at:http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/librariesandarchives/familyhistory/index.html |
