OGI total passes 370,000 data sets!

Today's update of 410 additional data sets has pushed the total over 370,000!  Now my goal is to reach 400,000 by the end of the year.

I hope you are all having a good 2018 so far and finding some time to research your ancestors.  The OGI continues to save hours of time by showing me exactly which sites have the data I need.

I enjoyed using the GRO Index this past week to verify some maiden names and find missing children (who were born and died inbetween censuses) so I have decided to create a detailed step-by-step guide on how to use the GRO Index.  That will be uploaded to the blog this month.

This weeks updates include the first part of the FamilySearch Lincolnshire Parish Registers collection which is slow going as each place (and there are over 600 parishes in that county) need to be manually searched and the start and end date ranges tested.  The first batch added to the OGI today is 108 parishes, 508 left to check!  I will upload another section next week.  This allows you to know if your Lincolnshire ancestors from a specific place are included in this collection by searching for the town in the OGI.

The Norfolk Baptisms Project site has added another set of baptism transcripts from Norfolk, namely Ovington, St John the Evangelist from 1813-1880.

There are also new collections added to the OGI from Findmypast:

The Norfolk Monumental Inscriptions 1600-1900's Image Browse includes 14,000 headstone transcriptions for 260 Norfolk cemeteries.

The Lancashire, Oldham Cemetery Registers 1797-2004 Image Browse which guides you immediately to the films you need to view cemetery and burial registers along with other related material for the city and suburbs of Oldham.

The Middlesex Monumental Inscriptions 1485-2014 collection has been updated to include date ranges for each of its 23 cemeteries.  

Findmypast also announced the addition of the Wiltshire parish baptisms index 1538-1917 collection but, yet again, this is not new and has been on their site for a number of months already.  I have asked them why they do this and their answer was they wanted to "highlight" existing collections.  Fair enough, but I don't think they should be marketed as "New Records".  It is misleading and untrue.

Rootsweb are still recovering from their security concerns and according to an update on 9th Jan, they are trying to activate a lot of personal genealogical sites a few hundred at a time.  More info here.  If you find a reference to a rootsweb site on the OGI and you cannot see the correct content, remember to use the amazing Internet Archive Wayback Machine that can show you backed up copies of websites.  The OGI actually includes 1,939 sites which are no longer online thanks to the Wayback Machine!  I am unaware of any other genealogical website offering links to dead sites.  If you find some which are not included on the OGI, please let me know!

I hope the new additions will be of use to you and will add to your research resources.

Best wishes for a successful week of genealogical research!

Tim Manners