The objective of Society projects is to make
past records concerning people in Berkshire more
accessible. The end products are sold as fiche or
a search service is provided. Details are given
in the booklist, on the Society website or under
postal search services in the Berkshire Family
Historian (see page 6o). Many of you will have
noticed new publications on the bookstall and the
subsequent increase in parishes or periods
available for searching. In addition, the
Research Centre has in the upstairs library
reference items such as not-yet-published
Monumental Inscriptions and fiche of parish
registers, and downstairs there are several
commercially available computer based indexes
covering Berkshire or Berkshire people.
Berkshire
parish registers
The largest on-going project is transcribing,
computerising and checking entries (some going
back nearly 500 years), of Berkshire parish
registers deposited at the Berkshire Record
Office. Transcribing was started by the late John
Brooks and now continues under Irene Littleby and
her volunteers with Brian Edwards compiling the
computer database. The task is enormous due to
the number of records and the detail available
for each baptism, marriage and burial. Moreover,
skill is required in interpreting the written
entries. Because of the magnitude of the work
only a few parishes have been completed and
published to date. We are regularly issuing fiche
of new parishes, so keep an eye open for the ones
you want.
The Marriage
Index
This index now lists over 17,000 marriages.
All the pre-1837 Anglican parishes in 'new'
Berkshire have been transcribed for the period
1700-1837 and about half have been checked for
the 180 to 1837 period. This project is under the
leadership of Sue Matthews and the Vale Branch.
Sue and her team are making great strides but
more volunteers are needed to cheek parish
registers on a regular basis at the Berkshire
Record Office. When more complete, the index will
be available as a search service and on fiche. A
job that can be done at home by someone on the
internet (and with a good ISP deal) is to
download certain parish register entries from the
IGI. These are then used for checking purposes.
Full instructions will be sent to any volunteers.
Oxfordshire Family History Society has completed
the old Berkshire parishes that are now part of
Oxfordshire.
Burial Index
David Wright and his team included over 75,000
burials from 68 parishes, non-conformist
churchyards and cemeteries in the initial issue
of the National Burial Index CD-Rom. David
reports elsewhere that the database now contains
104,800 entries. The work continues rapidly for
inclusion in future NBI editions. Regular updates
of the burials covered are given in this journal
(see page 21) and details of the search service
elsewhere on this web-site
Berkshire
Overseers Project
Abbreviated transcripts are being made of the
10,000 plus papers of the Old Poor Law period (mid-seventeenth
century to 1830s) by the Berkshire Overseers
Project under Brian Hunt. The papers variously
cover Settlement Certificates and Examinations,
Removal Orders, apprenticeship, bastardy orders
and militia service. Twenty-one of the 26 Unions
are now available on fiche. The survival rate of
records is variable with virtually nothing from
some places. However, the movement of people
between parishes means that many associated
parishes, including some far from Berkshire, are
included in place name indexes. Only the papers
from St Mary's and St Giles in Reading remain to
be entered, and then the final summary and
combined index will be produced.
Monumental
Inscriptions
MIs tend to be recorded by those with a
special interest in the village or church. As the
years pass, the inscriptions on tombstones become
more illegible and few churches have detailed
plans to locate graves and even fewer have the
inscriptions written down. A very active group
from the Society recorded the inscriptions of
about 50 churchyards in the iggos. Many need
mapping, indexing and updating to make them ready
for publishing. If you are interested in helping
with a particular church or cemetery, or one that
has been recorded by another interest group (such
as a local history society), please let us know.
Mike Roberts is the MI co-ordinator for East
Berkshire.
1851 Census
Geoff Mather is beavering away at the 1851
Berkshire Census that he hopes to finish this
year. Full transcriptions and indexes are being
put onto fiche. Most of the main population
centres have been covered and the Booklist gives
details of what is currently available on fiche
or in booklet form. Geoff also provides printouts
of individual folios.
Berkshire Strays
A new project under Margaret Young is the
Berkshire Strays Index of people who appear in
the records of other counties or countries. A
typical example is my mother who was born in
Theale, married in Lincoln and died in Bedford.
This index can be very useful in tracing your
ancestors' movements. Please send Margaret
details of any strays that you find. This project
is being developed alongside the Berkshire Name
Index and will directly feed into the BNI. A
separate search of the Strays Index will be
introduced in the future.
Police records
A re-activated project concerns the records of
the Police Museum at Sulhampstead. John Bowley is
now computerising records of Police Constables
joining the Reading force transcribed in the
iggos. Further details, such as the appearance (height,
eye colour) of the constables, are available at
Sulhamstead. Errol Page is starting to transcribe
other registers.
Berkshire Name
Index
The major new project is the computerisation
of the Berkshire Name Index. Searches at present
are of the 100,000 or so cards or paper slips in
the Research Centre. To these we will add names
that emerge from other projects, such as those
mentioned above. In the long term we aim to
include as many as possible of those people who
have appeared in records in the county. As an
index, it will inform the researcher in what
records the name can be found. The minimum data
will be, for example, 'Smith, John, 1879,
Aldermaston, Marriage'; in this example the
Parish Register or the Marriage Index can be
consulted for more details. Greater detail will
be provided for records that are not published
elsewhere. Many volunteers will be required soon
to help Sandra Grist to input the current names
index which is maintained on record cards.
New projects
We have other possible projects. Perhaps
someone would like to photograph all the churches
and chapels, or village high streets in the
county and write a short piece on the village.
The Berkshire Record Office and Society members
hold other records that can be transcribed. Do
you have any interests or ideas for projects?
Volunteers
These projects and the publication of the
results depend on our many volunteers. The
process of transcribing and checking is well
established, but necessarily time-consuming for
the sake of accuracy. The shortage of volunteers
to work at the Record Office in Reading is
seriously delaying both the parish register and
Marriage Index projects. Some of our volunteers
live far away (one even in Australia) and so are
unable to get to Reading. You will all have
benefited from indexes and similar information
made available by this and other societies.
Please remember that and offer to help when you
are able, and wherever you are able. Contact me
at the Research Centre or by email to
. If you have
a laptop that would be a wonderful bonus as it
cuts down some stages thus reducing time and
potential errors.
with any queries
