* Introducing myself and a little (or maybe big) question

[Gowermick]

Miketate,
Obviously, if you saw a handwritten one, not all have been transcribed. I checked before I posted, and saw a typed one for 1838!
As the typewriter wasn’t patented until 1868, I doubt they are ‘originals’

[Mark1834]

Mike (L) - the GRO themselves started to copy the earliest indexes decades ago, but stopped as it was very labour-intensive and added little value. The old printed indexes in the public search room were these typed volumes, so that’s all we’ve ever had access to.

[Gowermick]

The old printed indexes in the public search room were these typed volumes, so that’s all we’ve ever had access to.

Sorry, I disagree, when I first started, 20 years ago, they were handwritten indexes on Freebmd!

[Mark1834]

I’m old enough to remember using the printed quarterly indexes at St Catherine’s House in the 1980s, and the earliest years were definitely typed copies. I don’t know which versions were filmed (the original longhand or the publicly available typed copies) but it’s easily resolved - can you post an original longhand page that is no longer available?

[Gowermick]

No chance, I note the reference but have never kept an image.

[Mark1834]

I was looking through my old docs to see if I could find any more details about which versions of the indexes have been available when, and I came across this picture of the old St Catherines House search room taken from a 1987 OPCS leaflet. This was the only place where you could search the original index volumes, so to look up a simple GRO reference, it was either this or a very slow and laborious grind through microfiche copies at a handful of other locations around the country...

St Catherines House.jpg (127.32 KiB) Viewed 7803 times

[Gardengirl]

Those were the days! What a great photograph - brought the memories flooding back!

[ColeValleyGirl]

The precursor to (IIRC) Findmypast (the website had BMD in the title but I can't remember it exactly) had images of handwritten indices... I had a clearout a few years ago and deletes loads of downloaded images.

[Mark1834]

Do you mean 1837online? They were the first to get the indexes on line (with limited searching, if I remember correctly) and later re-branded themselves as Find My Past. The GRO moved from handwritten indexes to typeset ones in the mid-1860s, so most volumes prior to then are longhand. The GRO produced typed transcripts of a few early volumes (mostly births and marriages), and the unresolved question is whether the longhand originals of these were ever available on line. I think not (why would they digitise the much larger longhand volumes when compact typed copies were already available?), but it is easily resolved by somebody producing a longhand page that is no longer available.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Mark, yes it was 1837online and I definitely downloaded image of handwritten images (marriages and births mostly).

[Gowermick]

Mark,
I have only ever used on-line sources to view BMD indexes (mainly Freebmd) and most definitely used handwritten ones, despite your claims they were never available on-line. Didn’t Miketate state he saw them recently in an earlier post?

PS Have just downloaded a handwritten one, but it is too big to attach. I'll reduce the size and post shortly.
PPS Have cropped it to reduce size

[Mark1834]

Mike/Helen - read my last post again. I did not say longhand images were not available. They demonstrably are. The debate is whether the small number of typed copies (mostly very early births and marriages) were ever available in longhand form. I'm suggesting that they weren't, and nobody is producing any evidence to the contrary. All you are saying is that you have downloaded some longhand images. Of course you have - so has any FreeBMD user who has used data prior to the mid-1860s!

[Gardengirl]

Another quickie question please

I'm trying to tidy my rather muddled and inconsistent list of sources. Is there any particular reason to keep the BMD sources listed as two sources for each - with the two date spans - or could I just merge them to something simpler such as GRO birth register, GRO death register and GRO marriage register?

I’m beginning to wish I'd never asked

[TimTreeby]

For very good presentation on GRO Indexes and how produced etc. see this presentation by Audrey Collins at RootsTech 2018.
https://www.rootstech.org/category/satu ... 8?lang=eng

[Gardengirl]

You don't need to purchase FH to use AS.
It is a free companion program you can download and install separately.
See ancestralsources:index|> Ancestral Sources Installation Guide, etc.

I'm ready to have a go with Ancestral Sources now but have hesitated at the first hurdle. On the download page there are lots of options and it's not clear which one I need.

Could someone please tell me which of these I need to get? Is it the census auto text one or the utility one at the bottom of the list?
https://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?i ... ralsources

[Gardengirl]

No worries, ignore that. I have worked it out. Off to work through the tutorial now.

[tatewise]

I am not sure why you have gone to the Downloads.
You need to go to ancestralsources:index|> Ancestral Sources for Installation Guide and User Guide.
ancestralsources:getting_started|> Getting Started with Ancestral Sources mentions a Plugin that is useful for invoking AS.
There are also tutorials and other advice there.

The fhugdownloads:ancestralsources|> Downloads and Links ~ Ancestral Sources are only useful after installing AS if you need them for capturing additional types of document, but mostly Census records for various countries, but if none of your ancestors lived in those countries then you don't need them.

[Gardengirl]

Sorry, Mike, I'm not entirely sure how I ended up there either but it looked right. I downloaded the one at the bottom. Should I uninstall that and start again?

[tatewise]

If you mean you installed from fhugdownloads:contents:ancestral_sources|> Utility ~ Ancestral Sources v5.3.0 then that is OK.

[Gardengirl]

Yes, I did. It seems to match your video tutorials so I must have done something right

Can I ask what you used to get the census transcript in the floating box on your tutorial demos?

[tatewise]

Do you mean here ancestralsources:tutorial:census:edit_auto_text_and_note#auto_text_transcript|> Auto Text Transcript? Where it says:

To further edit the text, click the Text… link to obtain a large editing window.

[Gardengirl]

No, I mean this one...

[tatewise]

Ah! That is a separate application window derived from the downloaded online transcript web page from such as Ancestry or FindMyPast and associated with the downloaded image of the Census page. It is not directly part of AS.

BTW 1: This is straying away from "Introducing myself..." so please start a new thread for your next question.

BTW 2: Against each heading in the KB there is a chain link icon that lets you copy links to postings.

[Gardengirl]

Thanks for your late night answers, and for both the BTWs. I will take note of all.