PARISH REGISTERS ONLINE
The pandemic had an enormous impact on the digitisation of archival material in 2020. For our annual survey of where to go for parish registers online, major new collections, unsurprisingly, are thin on the ground.
However, there have still been lots of improvements, tweaks, expansions and fresh tranches of data to existing collections, as well as some new agreements and partnerships that have begun to bear fruit.
Now that Findmypast no longer has exclusivity over Welsh parish registers, there are huge Wales collections available via both Ancestry and TheGenealogist – mirroring the pattern in Norfolk, where the parish material is available from a number of sources.
A new agreement with Westminster Archives means that Ancestry now has images of registers for the area, formerly on Findmypast, and is in the process of indexing. Findmypast retains its Westminster index, but no longer has the images.
This illustrates the kinds of problems that may arise in your research. You might find images on FamilySearch, but need to source an index elsewhere – through a commercial site, the local family history society (FHS), an Online Parish Clerks (OPC) project, or FreeREG.
LONDON AND MIDDLESEX
Registers from the capital and the ancient county of Middlesex
ANCESTRY £
Ancestry launched its Westminster parish collection in August 2020, bolstered by an additional tranche in October. This keeps Ancestry top of the heap when it comes to the capital, thanks to the
