Gwinear Parish, Cornwall

The last two updates to the website have been for this parish. First added a few weeks ago transcripts from the Marriage Register covering the period from 1700 up to 1740. Today I added the last of the Burials from 1786 to 1799 which now finishes this section.

Do not forget that there is a wealth of information available online for anyone researching there Cornish Ancestors. One of the best places to start is with the Countywide database which is found on the "Cornwall Online Parish Clerk's" website.

All the best

1904 Elctoral Roll for Somerset

Have dug something else out from among the old books and papers that I have in my collection. The latest update are some transcripts from the 1904 Electoral Roll for Eastern Somerset. These are just some small parishes that I was able to do one night last week while I had some free time and the first three transcripts cover the parishes of Alford, West Bradley and Yarlington, and can be found in the general Somerset section. The final one I did was for the Corton Denham parish and can be found in the South East Somerset section. Have also added to Corton Denham two external links to the Parish history and a parish map.

Following these in the next week or two will be more transcripts from this electoral roll covering the parishes of Blackford, Charlton Horethorne, Horsington, Maperton and some others too.

Cucklington Parish, Somerset

Okay, have to admit that I quietly uploaded the last update almost two weeks ago to the South East Somerset section of the site.

This was to the Cucklington pages, being a transcript of the 1851 census and also an interesting external link to a 1838 map of the Parish provided by British History Online a very interesting website for all those seeking the history of a parish in Somerset and other Counties.

Gwinear Transcriptions

A while ago I was looking at the Gwinear (in Cornwall) page on the website following on from some of the transcribing that I was doing of both burial and marriage records.

I noticed that there was very little in the way of baptisms except for a short period from 1813 to 1820 which were originally done for me by a willing volunteer. I thought that it would be nice to do the period from 1800 up to1812 and it should be a reasonably quick task.

Should have known better, as at this time period in the history of Gwinear, it was a fairly large parish and some weeks later I have only done 2 years!! some 110 entries. Not much you are probably thinking, why is he so slow??

Well to put it into perspective by way of comparsion with the other Cornish Parish I am working on (Mawgan in Meneage), Gwinear averages just over 60 baptism entries for each year whereas Mawgan is less than half of this. On top of this everything goes into 3 databases all in different formats. The 1st Database is in html for the website, the 2nd database is in CSV text for the Cornish OPC Database and the 3rd in Excel for a 3rd database, so it is very time consuming and slow, especially for a parish which had a large population.

The advantage of doing 3 databases is that it does mean an automatic re-checking of the transcriptions as I go. Anyway just keep on chipping away at it as I get the time is the best way for me.

All the Best

North Cheriton - South East Somerset

North Cheriton is a small parish to the North of Horsington on the road to Wincanton. Many of the families that lived here had family links to Horsington as well.

Todays update to the website is for this parish, starting with the main page being updated to bring it into line with the other South East Somerset Parish pages. A transcription of the 1841 census has been added as well as links to two offsite web pages, the first covering the history of the parish and the second to a parish map, which is very useful for researchers.

Roger

Updates and other things.

Yes, I know, they have slowed up a bit. Too many other things happening with work and family, which had well and truely side tracked me again for awhile and will continue to do so for some time to come. Although there have not been any updates to the website for awhile I have still found some time to spend on my own Family History as well as doing some serious research on the Horsington Hannam's which is quite interesting although very involved.

Over the coming months I will finish off the 1841 census for the South East Somerset Parishes and will also be doing some of the 1851 census records as well. Most of the 1841 census transcriptions are finished except for the 2nd part of Wincanton. They mainly need outstanding queries and checks to be done, which for Wincanton is proving difficult as I don't have enough supporting records to be able to cross check properly. I also plan to continue on with transcribing the Horsington PR's which I did start about 2 yrs ago. I hope to start on transcribing some of the other Somerset PR's as well, starting with a re-check of Stowell as I don't have them all online yet. My involvement with the Cornwall OPC project will see a continuation of transcribing records for both Gwinear and Mawgan in Meneage. I hope to keep adding to the website every 10 to 14 days for the forseeable future.

There are many other records to be transcribed and added to the website including Directories, Parish Register transcripts, more census records for parishes surrounding those that I concentrate on and these include those on the Dorset side of the County Line. So there is plenty to keep me busy. Another thing I would like to sort out on the website is the search function. I am looking at upgrading this so that search results can be refined.

Following on from the Cornwall OPC project, late last year I got involved with the Somerset OPC project and I will post more about this project here, later.(See the South East Somerset page for more information) There will also be seen here information covering the Somerset Record Society and Somerset & Dorset Notes & Queries over the next week or two.

All the Best
Roger

Mawgan in Menage, Cornwall - OPC Project

Now that the summer is over, I will hopefully be able to concentrate on adding more information to the website and updating this blog more often. I do have several different transcriptions on the go at the present time, but many need more checking for mistakes etc:

Anyway onto todays update to the website which consists of more transcriptions of the Baptisms Register for Mawgan in Meneage. The years 1721 to 1750 have been added to the relevant page on the website. Along with this have also been added to the same page the transcripts of surviving BT's covering covering the same years that have already been done from 1700 to 1750, with any variations from the Register being noted.

Coming soon for Mawgan will be transcripts of the Marriage Banns. These cover the years 1754 to 1812. I am presently about half way through them.

All the Best

Updates to Site

Have been a little quiet, having not updated this blog for awhile. I am not sure whether I will keep this blog going for the website, but will give it another 6 months or so, to see whether any use is made of the comments section.

Since my last post I have added transciptions of the 1841 Census for Charlton Horethorne, Rimpton and Sherborne Union Workhouse to there respective sections.

As part of the Cornwall OPC have added further transcriptions of the Mawgan in Meneage Baptisms Register covering the period from 1700 up to 1720

Roger

Spam Email

Don't we all hate spam emails! I have been fairly fortunate in that I have hardly had any now for over 4 years and this is mainly due to the fact that I hide all email addresses on the website in java script, so they are not easily found by the web crawlers that specifically harvest email addresses across the internet.

Well that all came to an end about 4 weeks ago when two of my email addresses started receiving spam mails, then suddenly it all turned into an absolute flood drawing in a third address in the process. This came about I believe as I found these addresses on someone Else's website with no protection to stop them from being harvested.

The end result - I have deleted all 3 addresses and introduced new addresses on my website. That bought an end to the spam mail, so things are now back to normal. The moral of this little story is that if you are going to supply email addresses to others for Family History research purposes and they do not hide email addresses on there website, then use a Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo email address that you can close when the spam mail becomes too much to handle.

Have a Great Day
Roger

Horsington, Somerset

Did this update a few weeks ago and then forgot to post any updates about it. Another 1841 census transcript has now been finished and uploaded to the site, this time for Horsington in Somerset. Other 1841 Census transcripts on there way include North Cheriton, Templecombe, and Charlton Horethorne, with the last one most likely the first to be uploaded to the website.

Roger

Milborne Port, Somerset

The second update for the weekend was finally the completion of the second part of the 1841 census for this parish. You can get to the page by clicking the link above.

This particular transcription has proved to be a bit of a challenge. It has had everything in it, from bad handwriting to shocking spelling along with the usual faded writing in some parts. Just to finish off my frustration last night my web editor decided to crash and guest what? I had not saved my work for over an hour at that stage. Luckily I did not loose too much.

I am not too sure what is coming next as I do have several things on the go, but depending on work I shall try to keep to putting new transcriptions online every 7 to 10 days or so.

Roger

Gwinear, Cornwall - OPC Project

Those of you who have been involved with family history for awhile will know what the OPC Project is, but for those who are new to Family History, OPC stands for "Online Parish Clerk". The Cornwall project I think was the first one started off and this worthwhile Project has now spread to many other English County's. Basically we are volunteers who collect, collate and transcribe records for a chosen specific parish. Most volunteers have a website for there chosen parishes and there is also a central website which is well worth a visit (click here).

Anyway onto the first of two updates for this weekend. I had not done any work on the Gwinear page for quite sometime. I was having a look through it the other day and realised that I had never re-checked the burial records online that were done long before I got the new software I now use that makes it easier to read some of these very faded records. So I launched into a full check of the 1700+ burial Transcriptions online and corrected mistakes and added in the missing entries as I could now read them, so it is far more complete than it was. I also added another 20 years of transcripts from 1751 to 1770.

Roger