New OGI additions for April

It is good to return to all those using the Online Genealogical Index and especially those who take the time to read the blog.

To justify the month of silence, I was with my family in Utah, USA celebrating the wedding of my daughter Reilly and her husband Sam.  I also had the opportunity to visit the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, the world's largest genealogy library.  



I was invited to present the Online Genealogical Index to the support team working on the British Floor of the library.  Thanks to Val Atkinson for arranging this event.  There were two one hour sessions given and I enjoyed meeting over 50 attendees who seemed quite interested in how the OGI can help with researching British ancestry quickly and efficiently.

Here is the list of the latest updates to the OGI.

• Cardiganshire Burials collection updates from Findmypast.
• Cheshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire and Yorkshire Civil Registration births and marriage updates.
• Cornwall Burials collection updates from Findmypast
• Gravestone Photos updates (lots of new cemeteries included)
• New Gloucestershire Monumental Inscriptions collection covering 318 churchyards from Findmypast.
• New Kent Parish Record collection for a few parishes from Ancestry
• Updated transcriptions from the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk website.
• New memorial inscriptions for a few British cemeteries hosted on Geneanet
• Updated baptism transcriptions from Norfolk Baptism Project
• New Findmypast collections of digital parish register images for Suffolk and Surrey.
• New Yorkshire Parish Record collection of 95 digital books from Ancestry.
• 58 new archive.org links to digital books covering parish registers and memorial inscriptions from Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire, Warwickshire and Yorkshire.
• And finally, a burial register for Chiddingly, Sussex from FamilySearch books!

The total number of links on the OGI is approaching 373,000.  Still hope to reach 400,000 by the end of the year.

There is a slight bug when switching between countries using Chrome on the OGI home page.  The counties do not always load for Wales, for example.  It seems to be blocked due to either security software or a browser issue.  I tested the same process on Firefox and this seems to work perfectly.  I hope to find a solution soon for those using Chrome or other browsers.

I may need to remove the broken Rootsweb links to data in the near future as they are still not repaired.  This mainly effects links for Derbyshire.

Thanks again for your support and interest.  I will continue reviewing my monthly list of ever-changing source sites and also look for new resources to fill in the gaps in data.  I hope that one day, the records for parishes in England and Wales will be so well represented, researchers will always come to the Online Genealogical Index first.

I wish you all well and hope your research is fruitful and your family tree continues to grow.

Until next time,

Tim Manners