Wednesday, 14 July 2021

New Ancestry Staffordshire Collections added

Dear Users of the OGI,

An additional 1,737 data sets have been added to the Online Genealogical Database this week.  The majority are the new Ancestry Staffordshire Parish Register collections.  These cover Baptisms, Banns, Marriages and Burials from 1538 to 1900.  This brings the total of data sets on the OGI to 413,443.  Each one was researched, typed in and uploaded!  Seven years in and the OGI is still growing.  

I was very honoured to receive the personal project of former vicar Andrew Knight of Lougher, St Michael's parish in Swansea.  


He has transcribed each of the hundreds of headstones in the churchyard and ordered them by surname.  This is now available on the OGI under Glamorganshire or see it now here.

I hope the OGI can be a tool to preserve the projects of others unavailable elsewhere online.

Here are the details of the recent uploads:

Off to Devon next week but will keep an eye out for any new genealogical data coming my way to pass on to all of you lovely people.

I hope you have had a chance to see the Family Tree Magazine article about the OGI (also got a mention on the cover!).  It is an excellent article written by one of their editors with a few tweaks by myself.

Have a great summer and take some time to visit family.  Maybe you will discover some clues to your genealogical mysteries.

Best regards,

Tim Manners

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Monday, 5 July 2021

New Memorial Inscription Collections

Dear Users of the OGI,

I hope you are having a great summer so far.  Today, I uploaded 685 new record collections.  The majority of these are church monuments and memorial inscriptions.  As you know, a headstone can contain birth, death and family relationships so very useful for adding to your trees.  Here is one I found recently of my own 4th great-grandfather James Fletcher and his wife Eleanor (thanks BillionGraves!).  This is in Bracknell, Berkshire.  If anyone lives nearby, please send me a closeup minus all the ferns!

I am grateful to an OGI user who contacted me to recommend the Church Monuments Gazetteer and another who recommended the Somerset and Dorset Family History Society website.  The latter has an excellent memorial inscription index for hundreds of churches in those counties.  Please keep sending any recommended sites and I will add links to the database.

Here are the details about today's update:

I have had some positive experiences searching in the OGI this week.  Today, I saw a message from someone looking for a burial in Ribbesford, Worcestershire but not sure where to look.  In less than a minute, I had searched the OGI, found the resource (the National Burial Index on Findmypast) and found the burial in 1743.  I wonder how long that individual had spent looking for that burial?  I made sure to let them know about how to use the OGI in the future.  Please pass the word along to other researchers as they will save hours of time and also promote the value of the OGI to others.

The issue of Family Tree Magazine with a two page article about the Online Genealogical Index goes on sale at the end of July (the August 2021 issue).  This is the UK version of the magazine (I think there is a USA version as well).

We are off to Paignton, Devon for a week when school ends in a couple of weeks.  I hope the weather will be as nice as in this photo.


I will continue searching for valuable genealogical resources online.  After 7 years of searching, the collection has now reached 411,706 data sets.  Each of these has been personally researched, tested and documented!  I am proud to advertise the hard work of many researchers around the world who have dedicated hundreds, even thousands, of hours recording the lives of our ancestors for our benefit.

Wishing you a warm, safe and relaxing summer,

Tim Manners

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