Shotgun searching for ancestors.

Searchers,

Over the last few years I have found the following procedure quite
useful for searching the area around a parish where I'd found an event
(B,M, or D say) happened but did not know whence the forebears I'd

Farm1...

for

Geoff...

Eve please, enlighten the darkness. Whence on-line?

Eve McLaughlin...

Not on line - answered elsewhere. But I give up, if people don't want to
be helped.

Farm1...

But remember Eve, not all readers of this list are located in Britain.
Those of us who aren't do want to learn and be helped. We rely on
morsels dropped by those who do live in Britain and who are used to
the British records and systems to give us a few clues now and then.

Often those morosels take considerable time and effort to follow
up/sort out research and that is even before trying to figure out how
to get the the actual information held byt he various Brit
institutions/organisations. You grew up with the Brisih system. What
is obvious and simple to you does not necessarily apply in other
places - one example and a very simple one. Brits use BMD but in Aus
that is BDM. Fairlry instant to translate but that is not always the
case.

Geoff...

Oh dear a typo! But the 1841 only gives counties which is
microscopic
helpwise!

found in that particular parish might have come. I've searched 36
LDS films of PR's and BT's for I only trust locations found! Film 37
is on order and others are in the queue!

You will need Parloc the free parish locator programme from:-

and it's helpful to put :-

in your favourites list.

1. Open Parloc

2 Enter the known parish name in the Search window and select Find
First.

3. Using Parloc's instructions, find all the parishes within (say)
5 miles of the one you choose and create a csv file on the desktop.

3 Sort the file in ascending order of distance - to keep track I
delete one item of the csv data when search completed.

4. Go to the freepages site above and search for the surname in each
of the spreadsheet parishes working outwards.

Geoff...

Among the chaff as I said.

And if it's not on-line it will cost me over Ł35 for a cheap day
return to
Waterloo starting at 05.30 and getting home after 22.00 with over 7
hours
travel. I know not the cost from Waterloo to Kew but who cares anyway!

To go to the GLS Record Office would cost over Ł45 for a cheap day
return plus
taxi fare and over 9 hours travel.

Travel by car from where I live is out of the question.

Quicker result? Maybe BUT the likelyhood of finding much during one
(and
first) visit to an RO is nigh on infinitesimal, so more journies will
be
needed!

If a parish has no extracted batch, check the LDS Library catalogue
for a film of the parish's records. If no film - join the club!!!

Of course, you could go to the IGI and get thousands of names giving
submitted and extracted data then you only have to sort the chaff from
the wheat!!

BUT, it would be foolhardy to think that this procedure does away with
the need to search, or to have searched, the relevant PR's or BT's
etc.