Resources for Researchers
This is a page pointing to resources which researchers may find useful. It's not always possible to visit a local County Record Offices, and resources on-line or which can be purchased may be invaluable. This page is focused mainly on resources in Northumberland & Durham, but will be useful to others since some of the resources listed cover more than Northumberland and Durham.
Resources On-line
Parish Register Indexes
These are books indexing the parish registers of various churches, published in book form, usually around 1900, and now made freely available on the internet. 921 parish register books are listed for many parishes in the UK.
- Go to www.archive.org/.
- In the search box type "parish registers" to get a list of all available registers,
- or "parish register xxx" where xxx is the name of the diocese. This will list all the books available for the Diocese.
- or "parish register yyy" where yyy is the name of a parish.
They can be downloaded, but are arguably more easily acessed on-line using the browser provided by the site.
Bishops Transcripts for Northumberland & Durham.
Before the creation of the Diocese of Newcastle, some 100 years ago, Northumberland Churches were in the Diocese of Durham. Hence Bishops Transcripts for older Northumberland Parish records are held in the University Library on Palace Green, Durham City.
However these transcripts have been photographed and the images made available on-line by Family Search (a part of the Church of Latter Day Saints who also maintain the IGI records). It's slow work since each of the images takes a while to download, but arguably better than having to make a trip to Durham.
- Go to https://beta.familysearch.org/.
- Scroll down the page to find "Browse by Location"
- Click on the "Europe" link to take you to a page called "Historical Records Collections".
- Scan though to find "England, Diocese of Durham Bishops' Transcripts ca., 1700-1900", and click on it.
- Select "Browse through 108812 images", and find the ones you want to look at.
The international Geologiocal Index, (IGI) - helps
The IGI is a well known resource for family historians though it's sometimes difficult to get into.
- I find the best place to start from is www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=igi/search_IGI.asp&clear_form=true.
- Or more easily just enter "IGI search" into Google.
What may not be so known is to do a more precise form of search, if you know the place you want to look at, by searching using batch numbers. Hugh Wallis has produced a super site which enables you to do this, and has lots of helpful hints on searching the IGI by batch numbers.
- Go to http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm
- Skip past the introduction (unless you really want to read it - it is helpful!)
- Find "Take me to the numbers" and follow the obvious links to pick out your country, then county and parish.
Resources For Sale
The Northumberland & Durham Family History Society, sell a large variety of micro-fiche and CD's of various collections of records. You can use a fiche reader at your local library.
- Go to http://www.ancestral-indexes.co.uk/ to see what's available.
You can order them on-line and have them posted to you.
The Northumberland Record Office publish micro-fiche of various collections of records in their care. You can download a pdf file as a catalogue, and order them to be posted to you.
If any of this is unclear please drop me an e-mail, or if you know of other resources please let me know.