Writing to your MP

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I would like to encourage all OPCs who are UK residents, not just those living in Cornwall, to write to their MPs.   You can find their email addresses on Theyworkforyou.  Obviously, you will have to edit my email, not just forward it.  Nor does it matter if an MP hears from several constituents.

Dear Ms Newton

I am a constituent of yours, living in Mitchell, and I would like to enlist your help.

My hobby is family history, in particular, Cornish family history.  I am a founder member of the Cornish Online Parish Clerk project (http://www.cornwall-opc.org/index.htm).  This is basically an "adopt-a-parish" scheme with over a hundred volunteers world wide.  OPCs are committed to helping Cornish FH researchers free of charge.  The project has an online, searchable, free-to-view database (http://www.cornwall-opc-database.org/) with over 2.3 million records online.  Our main target is the parish registers, but we always looking for other sources of useful data.  

For the last six months I have been exchanging emails with the Registration Office in Truro, trying to persuade them to let me photograph and transcribe the indices of the 19th century registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths.  Not the registers, the indexes.  Yesterday, they said no, quoting an email they had had from the Policy Dept of the General Registration Office.  This said:

“This query is linked to a wider issue relating to access to records by family history societies, Ancestry, Find my past etc.   We are still seeking a resolution to this query and while I am unable to provide a definitive answer at present, I will advise you as soon as I am aware of the outcome.

In the interim, you may wish to advise the parish clerks that the public may only have access to the indices in the manner provided for by statue, i.e. in accordance with s.64 of the Marriage Act 1949, where you will note that there is no provision to transcribe or photograph the indexes, see link below.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/12-13-14/76/section/64  “

It is interesting that they mention commercial operators such as Ancestry.  They, of course, would charge for access to the data, we don't.  Also, they say that the relevant act has no provision to allow the photographing or transcription of the indices.  But does it say that they can't be?  

As they have a policy dept, I would like to know what the policy actually is and how they intend to alter it.

I would like to re-iterate that it is the indices I want to transcribe, not the registers.

Hoping you can help.

Rgds

Michael

Some background.  There are about 30 such projects in operation.  According to the administrator of UKBMD, he has been at usergroup meetings with the GRO and no objection to such projects was raised by them.

The Truro RO allowed CFHS to copy and transcribe the indices some years ago, but the results were not used for reasons not explained to me.  Personally, I think it was because rather belatedly they realised that CFHS charged for access.  I also think that within County Hall there is an IT department that would like a council web site to host the data, but they have neither the expertise or money to do it. We on the other hand have both the expertise and the web site!

Finally, despite not admitting any knowledge of UKBMD, in 2009 the Truro RO asked UKBMD for advice on setting up such a project.

Local BMD registers

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A couple of years ago, Myra asked me to subscribe to the mailing list of the Open Genealogical Alliance.  This is a bunch of people interested in public access to public data.  They are operating a bit above our pay grade but they are interested in the same data as we are.  This is a quote from the mailing list.

The index for the civil register of life events - births, deaths and marriages (BMD) - is a collection of books populated with tables, where each row is a reference to a certificate for a corresponding life event. Every time someone is born, dies or gets married, the local council register issues a full page certificate, then it makes an entry of the event in the local index, and they also make a copy of the local index to be sent to a central location: the General Registry Office (GRO), part of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS). This institution has the collection of all these copied index books dating back to the mid nineteenth century. Older life event records were maintained by the church instead of the government, and are kept separately This index is meant to be digitised and made available online for free, but the delivery of this service has been delayed for many years due to problems with commercial subcontracting. In the meantime, other forms of access to the index - such as CDs - have been restricted or suppressed, ostensibly due to the imminent availability of the online version. This long impasse has created a situation where a number of commercial companies - such as Findmypast.co.uk --are stepping in and providing paid for access to this public information that the government has committed to deliver for free. The Crown claims copyright on the design of the index, expiring 50 years after creation as they are not published works, but the actual content is factual information not encumbered by intellectual property restrictions. Thus anyone is free to copy the index data. Our partner organisation FreeBMD.org.uk has been providing free online access to a partial copy of the index transcribed by volunteers, as until recently the registers were handwritten, and thus requiring manual typing into a computer. The official advice form direct.gov.uk for citizens requiring free access to the index is to go via FreeBMD. This volunteer group has offered to help providing to the full index in collaboration with GRO, and we have been trying to help communicate and advance this great idea. Unfortunately, these requests have been batted away, without even being allowed to meet to discuss the options. Emails have gone without reply for months. We have been told for 18 months now that a new plan is imminent and we should just wait. We have responded that under the coalition agreement and the compact for the voluntary sector, we should be consulted at an early stage in order to help shape the plans, not informed afterwards. This is particularly applicable when we are proposing a solution that could save taxpayers money. Unfortunately this has been ignored. We have also been told that the online index is entangled with a major ICT project that is suffering delays. However, new government policy is to break down large contracts, and this would seem an ideal candidate for outing this new policy into practice, given the costly delays already incurred and the apparent inability of moving this forward within a reasonable timeframe. We would like to request an urgent intervention from the Transparency Team to help us reach to the GRO and discuss a way to promptly ensure that the full BMD index is available online for free as open data.

Barriers in accessing this data: 

The index for the civil register of life events - births, deaths and marriages (BMD) is meant to be freely available online, but this has been delayed for many years. Volunteer groups have offered to provide this as open data for free, but this has been dismissed without due consideration.

Benefits overview:

The BMD index is very valuable, being the first point of call for anyone in need of tracing their ancestors, or obtaining a copy of the certificates. This could be for practical reasons, such as an inheritance, but in most cases it's people wanting to explore their family history. There is fundamental transparency principle in making the civil register freely available, and also an economic imperative. Family history is a very popular hobby and drives a lot of cash online, with people paying up to £150 per year for subscriptions to commercial sites. For the UK it could also become a major economic activity thanks to ancestral tourism marketed to the descendants of British people. There is a huge market for US travellers, and several county councils have already started local programmes to tap into that market. The development of this kind of services based on secondary reuse of data, where the business model is tourism instead of data paywalls -- is hampered by the lack of proper Open Data in the family history domain. County council tourism boards cannot reach local US prospective travellers and commercial ancestry websites do not provide those data services.

I have a personal interest in this because 9 months ago I started an exchange of emails with the Registration Officer in Truro.  I asked for permission to photograph the indices to the local BMD registers.  Why bother to do this, given that FreeBMD has transcribed the GRO indexes.  However, it is well documented that there are differences between these indexes and those of the local BMD registers.

In January they said NO, although I pointed out to them that there are 30 such projects in England under the umbrella group UKBMD.  These are usually joint projects between family history societies and local Registration Offices.  But not always, they also involve groups such as ours.  Their refusal was based on advice from the GRO, which I think was incorrect.  I therefore wrote to my MP and asked her to ask the GRO just what the official policy was.  I am still waiting for an answer.  If anyone who is a UK resident would like to ask their MP what the policy is – I’ll provide a copy of my email.  The more people who ask, the better it might be.

Burial Registers of Lanreath in the 19th century

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Burials and causes of death in Lanreath in the 19th century

Transcribing a Burial Register can be a tedious process, particularly when the incumbent’s hand-writing is not of the best, but occasionally the tedium can be alleviated when one encounters an enlightened Minister. One such was the Reverend Richard Buller of Lanreath.

Crockford’s Clerical Directory indicates that Richard Buller graduated with a B.A. from Oriel College, Oxford in 1826, and gained his M.A. 3 years later. He was made a deacon in 1828, in which year he appears to have been appointed Curate of the parish of Lanreath in Cornwall, and he was appointed Rector of the parish the following year. He was then 23 or 24 years old. He died on 19th June 1883 at Pounds near Plymouth (his death was registered at Plympton St Mary) but he had certainly been carrying out his duties in the parish until the previous month – he performed his last baptism on 13th May and conducted his last burial on 17th May.

He had therefore served his parish for some 55 years. That is, of course, a commendable and remarkable record of service, but in terms of social history, he left us so much more.

In 1812 Parliament had decreed that with effect from 1st January 1813, Parish Registers should be in a standard format, with one volume for baptisms, one for marriages and one for burials. The format was set out in the 1812 Act, and the Burials Register was to have 5 columns, headed ‘Name’, ‘Abode’, ‘When Buried’, ‘Age’, and ‘By whom the Ceremony was performed.’ Anyone who has transcribed a Burial Register will know that the majority of incumbents recorded just the information they were obliged to record, but not the Reverend Richard Buller.

Beginning on 8th October 1828, when he had only been in post for a few months, he recorded that Mary Searle, aged only 49, had died of consumption. Between then and 17th May 1883, when he conducted his last burial service, there were 615 burials in Lanreath. Of that total, Reverend Buller had entered some further information on no less than 245 occasions. Some of those entries related to the personality of the deceased – in August 1841, for example, when he buried Samuel Willcock, aged 78, he noted ‘55 years Parish Clerk’. Similarly, in March 1855, when he buried James Stevens, aged 72, he noted ‘A Peninsular hero; medal with 2 clasps’. But the most interesting entries, arguably, are those where he recorded the cause of death. There are 237 such entries, and the biggest killer, by far, was consumption with 52 entries, followed by accidental death (22), scarlet fever (14), diphtheria (13), typhus (11), decline (10), dropsy (10), inflammation of the lungs (9), childbirth (8) and atrophy (5).

Of the 52 deaths from consumption, 23 were female and 29 male. The ages of the deceased ranged from 9 to 76, but the average was just 29 years 9 months.

Of the accidental deaths, 2 were of children (aged respectively 1 and 8) who were ‘burnt’, 1 (aged just under 2) was drowned, and a baby aged just one month old was killed ‘by a stick running thro' the eye to the brain’. In 1842, James Martin aged 10 had been ‘killed by a well falling in’, and in 1849 Philippa West died as a result of ‘poisonous berries’.

The accidents claiming the lives of adults were in some cases somewhat bizarre – in 1835, William Searle, aged 58, was killed when ‘a gutter fell on him’; the previous year Edward Tucker had died when he ‘fell from a rick’ and in 1846 Francis Hicks, aged 40, died as a result of ‘fall from a horse in frost’. On 14th May 1876 three men were buried as a result of ‘explosion of gunpowder’ (presumably an accident at the powder mills in the parish). The most unfortunate, however, was surely Anne Stephens, aged 32, who in 1831 was ‘run over by the Mail Coach’. For sheer misfortune, you have to feel for the family of Elizabeth Hockin, buried in June 1867, aged just 37. In the Register, Reverend Buller has recorded ‘childbirth; the 3rd sister who died thru’ the same cause’.

It seems unlikely that the Reverend Buller had any assistance from a medical practitioner, because of the sometimes rather strange explanations for deaths. According to the Register, ‘cold on Erysipelas’ claimed Richard Rowe in 1846; Philip Hicks, aged only 21, was buried in 1843 and the Register records his death as having occurred from ‘fright’. Strangely this idea of fright being the cause of death also appears in 2 burials, one in 1840 and the other in 1842. They were both females, aged respectively 75 and 72, and the Register gives their cause of death as ‘typhus – from fear’. ‘Hysteria’ is the somewhat surprising cause of the death of Mary Hill in 1865, aged only 17.

If anyone in the parish could have afforded to call in a doctor, it would certainly have been the Buller family, and yet when he buried his 3 year old daughter Jane Elizabeth, in 1838, Reverend Buller records the cause of death as ‘malignant sore throat’ which does not sound a reason which originated from someone medically qualified. Four youngsters succumbed to measles – 1 with ‘suppressed measles’ and of those who were claimed by scarlet fever (14 children, all under 10 years of age) 4 of them are recorded as having the ‘suppressed’ form of the disease.

As you work your way through the Register, one fact that you cannot miss is the apparent high number of child burials. Much has been written, of course, on the subject of infant mortality in the 19th century, and I was interested to see the actual numbers, rather than rely on impression. Of all the burials in the parish between 1813 and 1900, the age group of 0-10 bears the brunt – on average 30% of total burials, and in some decades over one third. No other age group comes anywhere near that percentage – the closest is the 71-80 group (where one would expect the death rate to be fairly high) but in fact it is not far off half of the rate for youngsters.

 (Click on image to enlarge)

John R.P. Evans

March 2013

Parish Burial Registers.

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In 2012 the question arose as to where family historians should go in Cornwall to obtain details of burials of family members. Historically, of course, most burials had taken place in the graveyard attached to the Parish Church, and would have been recorded in the Parish Burial Register. But as local populations increased and graveyards became full, alternative arrangements had to be found. In the main those cemetery sites were acquired and administered by the local authorities which existed at the time – the Councils of Urban Districts, Rural Districts and Parishes.  In time the UDC’s and RDC’s ceased to exist, and their responsibilities were taken on by the 6 District Councils, which in turn were recently disbanded and replaced by the Unitary Authority – Cornwall Council. The cemeteries which they administer are detailed on their website.

As far as the other authorities were concerned, I emailed all the town and parish councils in the county, asking whether they had a cemetery. Predictably a number never replied; one replied in a very arrogant and rude manner; one amusingly asked why I was asking the “real” parish clerk rather than the online variety; but the majority were pleasant and helpful. Again, as one might expect, most parish councils said that they  had no cemetery, and that burials were still taking place in the graveyards attached to the Parish Church.

Those who administered cemeteries were then asked whether they would give permission for their burial records to be copied. Bude Town Council and Falmouth Town Council said that, although they had no objection in principle, they were in the process of putting their records online, and there was little purpose in duplicating effort. Of the remainder, most said that they had no objection, and I spent several enjoyable days visiting the homes or offices of welcoming parish or town clerks and was usually liberally plied with refreshments while photographing their Registers!

Some of the authorities had only acquired their cemeteries after 1937 (in 2012 the “cut-off” date for the OPC database) so although I photographed their records and transcribed them, they will not form part of the database for many years. But some – notably St Stephen in Brannel, St Dennis and St Enoder – have records which either have contributed or will contribute (when I can complete the transcribing!) significantly to the database, not merely in numbers but in the detail provided.

Unlike the Parish Registers, the Cemetery Registers always give a grave location, very often give date of death as well as of burial, and frequently give occupation or family information such as “wife of” or “son of” etc.

So far I have recorded the Registers of Gorran, Luxulyan, Mullion, Cury, Wendron, St Dennis, St Stephen in Brannel, Probus and St Enoder. My quest will continue in 2013!

Written by the photographer, John Evans.

Bodmin Prison Registers

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County Records holds 24 volumes of the Bodmin prison registers, covering 1821 to 1916.  These volumes are rather large and very heavy.  They are in handsome covers, closed with brass clips.  The pages are in good condition and the handwriting is very neat, if sometimes rather small.  There are 10 records on each page and they contain minute detail about the prisoners including a detailed description of their physical appearance.  Other detail, that is often included, is a list of all the letters sent by the prisoner and details of the recipients.

To photograph them, I use an iPad.  The back camera is good and easy to use.  It doesn't make any noise and hasn't got a flash.  CRO doesn't allow noise or flashes!  You often hear muttered curses from camera users as their flash goes off.  When I started this project, I usually took 4 overlapping pictures to cover a complete page.  However, I now get by with two plus close ups for particularly dense patches of writing.

John Heath has been appointed supremo for transcribing the prison records and has 4 transcribers.  The main problem with transcribing them is the large amount of detail to be recorded.  I expect that most people are aware there is a commercial transcription available, but this is a limited transcript, and as usual, we are going for the full version.  And its free.  Each record is separate, so it is not possible for a researcher to browse the records.  

The registers include 3 for the Bridewell and 2 for debtors.  I have 13 left to do.

Left hand side:

Right hand side:

Please click on the image to enlarge.

The British in Afghanistan

This is a piece written by someone else.  It expresses my thoughts.

There should be a national debate abnout the tragic loss of lives in that dusty hell-hole commonly known as Afghanistan; and perhaps more importantly a discussion of the possible fate of all the politicians who sent, and continue to send, British Services personnel into harms way in order to establish a ‘Democratic State’ in Afghanistan.

The other ‘purpose’ of this multi-billion pound endeavour is alleged to be ‘keeping us safer here at home’ because of the sacrifices of those bright shining spirits in the drug- and blood-soaked sands of Afghanistan. The sheer lunacy of even believing in the very idea of a ‘democratic Government’ in Afghanistan should give all sensible people a pause for thought.

We tried it, to govern Afghanistan that is, over a century ago, and we eventually scurried out over the bodies of the sixteen-odd thousand British members of the column from Jalalabad. We went in again, time after time, to prevent influence from France, from Russia, and it got us absolutely nowhere.

We should have taken to heart the warning of the latest Russian occupation which was to support their Afghan proxy, an occupation which was total, brutal and unswerving, but which eventually came to nothing after the Mujahideen gained superiority through the advent of the Stinger missile supplied by America. Was the NATO-led invasion justified after 9/11? Most certainly yes, but instead of ‘nation-building’ by force, which has ever been a fruitless exercise wherever it been tried, we should have handed over to the Afghanis, told then that the next time the West would be coming, we would be coming to make their ‘country’ a smoking radio-active car-park, and to mind their manners; and then left.

Western politicians have yet to learn that you cannot make a Nation out of ten thousand villages, soaked in the beliefs of muslim autocracy. But we saw Bush, and Blair, and all the other guilty parties, including the fool John Reid, with his forever-remembered ‘British Forces could leave Afghanistan without a shot being fired’, prate, and parade, and posture.

We saw them line up beside the Cenotaph, with their wreaths of poppies, while not understanding that what they had signed the British Army up to achieve was just unachievable. And let us not forget that none of these posturing, primping princes of political thought have ever served one single day in uniform, of any colour or rank, at all.

We do not retain, in Britain, the ability to legally kill someone who has committed treason, but I for one would sign any petition to restore such a power, and then the first ones to be tried would be every politician, of any Party, who has expressed the slightest desire to extend, for one second, our presence in the corrupt stagnant pool of drugs, grand-scale larceny and murder which is the alleged country named Afghanistan.

The Sharrocks of Cornwall

In 1620, the College of Heralds visited Cornwall. Their visit was to check on the pedigrees of families claiming the right to bear arms. Armigerous families. Amongst the minor gentry of Cornwall was a family listed as the Sharrocks of Veryan. A later note was attached to the family tree claiming that they had originated in Lancashire, fled to Ireland, where they stayed for a hundred years before moving to Cornwall.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to link my wife’s paternal line to the Visitation family. She seems to be descended from a Thomas Sharrock, born about 1640, location unknown. His oldest known child was Matthew, baptised in St Just in Roseland in 1671. Matthew is my wife’s 6 times grandfather.

The family lived in and around St Mawes, where they were farmers. Matthew described himself as Yeoman, one step above a tenant farmer, and fairly respectable, as he was the Reeve of the Manor of St Mawes.

Throughout the 18th century, the family remained in St Mawes, presumably farming and also fishing. Certainly Joseph Sharrock, who died in 1833, was a mariner. The next generation joined the Royal Navy and then the Coastguard. The Coastguard was recruited from Navy personnel. Usually, tours of duty were not in the man’s home town, so the family moved to Boscastle on the north coast of Cornwall.

The next generation of my wife’s family was born near Swanage in Dorset at yet another Coastguard station. Joseph Pascal Rowe Sharrock, born in 1843, became a mariner in the Merchant Marine, often sailing out of Boscastle. The family now remained on the North coast of Cornwall, spread out between Newquay and Bude.

The next generation left the sea and settled in Newquay.

Although I cannot find any link between the Visitation family and that of my wife, all of the Sharrocks in Cornwall till quite recently are members of this one family. There were also Sharrocks in Cornwall before the Visitation family. So, the note on the 1620 pedigree might be correct and the Sharrocks arrived in Cornwall in the 14th century. Long enough to be naturalised?

Rioting

In 1961 I was a 25-year old sergeant in the RAF. I was stationed in Singapore flying Shackletons out of RAF Changi.

In the British colonies, as in the UK, the military were committed to assisting the Civil Power However, in Singapore it was a bit more immediate than in the UK. Which is how I came to be in a scruffy street in central Singapore. I was not on my own, there was a very young officer (younger than me), a Chinese magistrate and 30 airmen. We were a riot squad. Six of the airmen had rifles but no ammunition; the rest had batons. They wore khaki shirts and shorts with long socks and boots. They also wore steel helmets. The officer and I were dressed in similar fashion and we had revolvers - also with no ammo.

The opposition was about 20 Ghurka soldiers in sports kit The weren’t allowed to throw things at us, so they shouted, leaped about and pulled faces. A bit like the New Zealand rugby squad in their pre-match dance.

The magistrate read the riot act and we then unfurled our banner. Disperse or we fire. The airmen with rifles moved from the rear of the squad to the front, but didn’t aim their weapons. This had no effect, so the officer ordered me to send in the snatch squads. There were 3 pairs of airmen detailed off for this and they ran forward to nobble significant rioters. Three fights started, but eventually they secured three Ghurkas. I turned to my officer to report this and found him gone. Half a dozen Ghurkas had snuck up a side alley and seized this commissioned twit. He was supposed to stay in the middle of the squad but had wandered off for some reason. I watched him being hustled off down the alley and out of sight.

I was then seized of the dilemma that had bothered Hannibal, Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington. Should I split my force, deal with the rioters and at the same time chase after my officer. Things seemed to be going well without him, so I decided to deal with the rioters and forget about him. My own inclination was to order the riflemen to open fire (shouting bang bang), but the magistrate thought not. In fact, I was now in charge, once he had read the riot act he was out of the loop. However, I took his advice and got ready to lead the squad in a frontal attack on the Ghurkas.

At that point, the Army officer acting as observer stepped in and halted the exercise. He thought it had gone well, although he did suggest that losing your officer was pretty bad form. The Ghurkas returned my officer and we all got into our truck.

Another part of life’s rich pattern was complete!

Monthly newsletter for FreeBMD, FreeCEN and FreeREG

Issue 1 - March 2011

Welcome to the first FreeUKGEN newsletter, updating you on the latest information about the three constituent projects, FreeBMD, FreeCEN and FreeREG.

Dr Nick Barratt - Executive Director (nick.barratt@virgin.net)

1. Tri-project seminar

The tri-project seminar will take place on Thursday 21 April 2011 at The National Archives.

2. Executive meetings

In advance of the Tri-project seminar on 21 April, I will be meeting the Executives of FreeCEN and FreeREG on 29 March to discuss detailed requirements for each project.

3. Access to data and copyright

This issue remains a major concern to FreeCEN and FreeREG, and is currently being addressed in conversations with various organisations, including Familysearch, Ancestry, Find My Past and the Federation of Family History Societies. Contact with county and diocesan archives will also be made, once the first set of discussions to obtain material via partner organisations have concluded.

However, the situation is complicated by copyright issues which need to be addressed at the same time. This is not an easy area to work in, given the way copyright is created and assigned especially when ‘format shifting’ original raw data into printed format, microform or digital image. Similarly, copyright of transcriptions entered into the three project websites needs clarification as well and is also being addressed as an ongoing issue.

4. Software and website development

We are currently examining ways to make the three project websites look more synchronised, as well as provide elements of synchronicity when searching for people. The aim is to move towards a front-end platform that serves as a portal to the three sites, permitting the user to search across all three datasets by name; or drilling down into each individual website to search specific datasets, as they do at the moment. The look and feel – the skin – of the sites needs to be updated, and decisions made about the level of advertising hosted on each site, as without funds we cannot survive as an organisation.

Linked to this is a recognition that amendments need to be made to the current software for creation and submission of transcription data to ease the workload of Dave Mayall, and make the data easier to search across the projects. As with copyright, this is a tricky area because of the ongoing nature of the work; integrating new software could cause problems, whilst a completely new operating system might be equally disruptive. Work is ongoing, though, to fix existing problems based on the feedback we receive from the project Executives and Co-ordinators; however, as with any volunteer network, these things can take time so one route under consideration is the injection of funds to commission some work in this area. We are talking to a couple of organisations that might be able to assist with this, as well as the possibility of Open Source coding from the web or recruiting more technical volunteers. If you know of anyone who would be able to assist with coding and web development, please let me know via email.

5. Marketing and Promotion

Until the website situation is addressed, there is only a limited amount of marketing and promotion we can do around the three projects. However, an article about the work of FreeREG in Your Family History magazine generated a flood of enquiries from potential volunteers; and at the recent Who Do You Think You Are Live event, held at Olympia 25 – 27 February 2011 the projects won third place in Family Tree magazine’s Website of the Decade award, as voted for by the readers of the magazine. Given that this is the largest circulating magazine in the sector, and considering the number of commercial websites out there with large budget spends, this is an amazing achievement and one of the Trustees, Camilla von Massenbach, proudly collected the award at the event. Congratulations must go to everyone – the transcribers for producing the data, the Co-ordinators and Executives of the three projects, and the Trustees for facilitating the site.

We are also looking into using the social network Twitter to promote our work, and encourage volunteers to join up for transcription. At the moment, the most obvious user names have already been taken – FreeBMD, FreeCEN and FreeREG – so alternatives are being sought. If anyone would like to manage their relevant project account and post information, please let me know.

6. Open Genealogical Alliance

The three projects, under the banner of FreeBMD, have become major supporters of the Open Genealogical Alliance, announced at Who Do You Think You Are Live on the main theatre with the support of actress Miriam Margolyes. The aim of OGA is to challenge the current predominance of commercial organisations in the sector, as they skew access to data towards ‘pay-per-view’ models which means organisations such as ours are disadvantaged when trying to access data at source from the archives. This is one of the issues we’re facing at the moment when negotiating with county archives for access to parish registers, albeit a special case since parish registers are not considered public records per se, something else that OGA will be examining as part of its remit. As a consequence, OGA is questioning whether pay per view data is truly open; and if not, then projects such as ours should be given free access to the digital images to work off – thus producing higher quality ‘clean’ transcriptions which will benefit everyone.

Other projects that OGA are investigating include an economic survey of the genealogical sector, examining ways in which the market can still be monetised, but more room is made for volunteer transcription projects without compromising the need for archives to digitise, and recover costs (linked to what’s been outlined above); a survey of the various means of access to genealogical data, to produce a one stop shop guide to all data on the web (think ‘genealogy supermarket price comparison website, and you’re on the right lines); an assessment of Big Society Government projects that we could get involved with, such as the civil registration digitisation and indexing project that was halted last year; and an assessment of the legal status of parish registers – public record or private deposit by the church.

The other key driver of OGA is the Open Rights Group, and supporters also include the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Federation of Family History Societies. The website has only just been launched www.opengenalliance.org and you can follow them on Twitter @opengenalliance

This is an edited version - edited by me.

Cornish Family History for Free

Occasionally I get emails asking for advice on researching Cornish family history. Sometimes the writer seems to be asking me to conduct family history research - to which I say no thank you. However, I do have advice on how to carry it out online - and for free.

The first port of call should be the Cornish pages of GENUKI. Not only is there lots of information about Cornwall in general, there is a page for each parish. Numerous sources of information are linked to these pages.

Then you might check out the Cornish OPC scheme web site. Here again, each parish has its own page and there is much information, both in general and in particular. The Online Parish Clerks are committed to helping FH researchers and you should write to them asking for help. At the very least, they should be able to give advice on where to look.

A daughter project of the OPC scheme is C-PROP. Originally intended to carry parish register transcripts (which it still does), it has expanded its scope to include other sorts of data. It is a FREE online searchable database. No other county has one.

All of the Cornish 19th century census returns have been transcribed and posted online at the COCP web site. You can search them as texts or you can use the accompanying search engine. All of the 2.25 million records have also been uploaded to the FREECEN database.

You should join the CON-GEN Rootsweb mailing list. Post your questions there remembering to give as much detail as you can. List your surnames of interest in the subject line in BLOCK capitals. You can search the mailing list archives for these names, hopefully other people have included your names in their subject lines. In any case, an archival search will also search the texts.

On the wider national front, you can search for free the index of certificates for the UK on FreeBMD. Over 16 million census records are available on FREECEN and about 5 million parish register entries on FREEREG. Not all of these are Cornish obviously.

Finally, there is on the international scene, the LDS, the Mormons. Their database, which is free, contains hundreds of millions of entries and is constantly enlarging itself.

There are other avenues open to you, such as the Cornish FHS, but these are not free.

By the way, I have attended a number of “granny hunts” at Wadebridge. I usually ask beginners (and others) if they have taken the time to type their names and places of interest into Google. It is surprising how many haven’t, almost as surprising as what turns up. My brother-in-law, who is in the film business, had about ten thousand hits!

I haven’t listed any URLs (lazy) but Google will find them for you.

The Cornish OPC scheme - a personal view.

Looking round at the family history scene now, it is difficult to remember what it was like ten years ago when the OPC scheme was conceived. No Ancestry, no Familysearch and most people using computers had just been promoted from using toasters!

The three of us first met at the AGM of the CFHS, although we had been in touch via the internet and Paul and David had actually met as the latter returned from Canada. At the AGM we asked what were the plans of the CFHS to use digital media including the internet. Not only did they have no plans, but later correspondence revealed that the Chairman at that time was actively hostile to anything electronic.

The first sign of the changes to come was the successful launch of FreeBMD. All those hours we spent pouring over microfiche or huge books to locate the reference numbers you needed to buy an ancestral certificate. Now, hundreds of volunteers were transcribing the indexes and putting them online – free-to-view.

A sister project of FreeBMD was FreeCen. In 1999 that project was running a pilot project transcribing the Devon 1891 returns. I invited myself aboard and started off transcribing the Cornwall 1891. I was pleasantly surprised to find volunteers easy to recruit. So easy, that we started up the 1841 in parallel.

After the AGM, the three of us decided to meet for a pub lunch once a month to discuss family history. Occasional shouting attracted interest from the regulars and we got FH questions from some of them. We thought that, given the successful launch of the census project, that it would be nice to turn to the parish registers and give them the same treatment. Then we decided that we quite liked the “adopt-a-parish” idea. But it was the arrival of the name “Online Parish Clerk” that spurred us into action.

We liked it because it married the internet to family history. We also widened the scope to include any data, not just parish registers. We also liked it because it involved the worldwide Cornish online society. A feature of the Cornish census project was something that the organizers of FreeCen didn’t like. The emphasis in recruiting was on the Cornishness of the project.

Initially, the job of scheme co-ordinator was just to maintain a list of parishes and OPCs. Recruiting was done by occasional messages on the Cornish Rootsweb mailing lists. In addition, we appealed for anyone who had transcribed parish registers to gift their work to us. Our intention was to accumulate these transcripts to place them online free-to-view – one day.

This approach was maintained for two or three years with considerable success. Things changed when Myra took over as co-ordinator. The scheme acquired its own web site with a page for each parish. Then the searchable online database was created. The transcription of parish registers took off when the LDS started to supply copies on disc. Under Myra’s epic leadership, other sources of data were incorporated into the database.

In my opinion, Myra, aided by Diane Donohue, Julia Mossman and Bill O’Reilly, has created a scheme that is better than our original vision. I look forward to the next ten years!

The history of Mitchell

Michel is first styled a manor (manerium) in 1301 and a borough (burgus) in 1305, but both these titles were in process of creation in the earlier part of the thirteenth century. It is evident that the community was in its infancy at this time and we need not look in Domesday for any reference to it. In 1239 Walter de Ralegh and Isabel his wife (in whose right he was lord of the Manor of Degembris) obtained a royal charter for a yearly fair on St Francis’ day and a weekly market at Meideshol. It is probable that the chapel of ease at Michell dedicated to St Francis was erected by Walter de Ralegh at this time. We find it mentioned in a deed of 1292, and its dedication shows that it could hardly have been erected before the canonization of St Francis in 1222 and probably dates from about 1239. St Francis was the patron of the community and the chief Court Leet was held on the day after his feast.

In the early thirteenth century we can picture the infant community of Michell as a mere appendage to the Manor of Degembris. In 1284, however, Peter de Ralegh sold that manor to Sir John de Pello Prato. Michell was at this time cut adrift from the manor and sold separately to Sir Reynfry Arundell, who died lord of it in 1288. Once separated from the parent manor, the new Manor and Borough of Michell could hope to develop as an independent community. In 1283 it had sent its own representatives, a jury of six, to the Eyre at Launceston, thereby showing its right to a separate representation from the Hundred of Pydar. It did the same in 1301 and 1305. In 1283 and 1301 it bears the humble title of ‘villa’ but in 1305 the style ‘burgus’ is used to the first time. Sir Reynfry Arundell probably purchased Michell as a speculation. His son in 1289, regardless of the laws of political economy, raised the tolls at the fair, to the great hurt of the whole country. For this he was punished at the Eyre of 1301. At the same time he was compelled to show by what warrant he claimed ‘emendation of the assize of bread and ale when broken’, in his Manor of Medeshole.

Michell never became wholly exempt from its duties as a tithing of the Hundred of Pydar, despite its separate representation at the Eyre. It had to pay 13s. 4d. as smoke-silver and also maintain a thing-man at the Hundred Courts. In 1327 the ‘villa de Medeshole’ pays the subsidy apart from the parishes of St Enoder and Newlyn in which it was situated. In later rolls, however, no distinction of this kind is made.

Besides the actual village, the limits of the co-extensive ‘Manor and Borough’ included the tenements of Goonmarth and Nantellion. The greater part lay in St Enoder parish, the residue in Newlyn.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were probably some eight free burgesses, holding burgages of the lord (freeholders). Some of these holdings were amalgamated and their holders at the end of the eighteenth century became the five ‘Mesne-Lords’ of the borough, who were created by the chief lord of the manor by lease and release; and it was from among these that the portreeve or returning office had to be chosen. The lord of the manor had become the ‘chief lord’. In 1552, when the borough acquired parliamentary representation, these offices and titles gained a real importance. After constant disputes the House of Commons finally decided that the mesne-lord (including the portreeve), and the inhabitants who paid scot and lot (i.e. Rates), were alone entitled to vote. In 1829 there were four mesne-lords and three rate-payers!

Michell was probably at the zenith of its prosperity in the fourteenth century, before the Black Death. It sank in the fifteenth to rise again under Henry VII. Parliamentary representation failed to do more than keep it a living and increasingly corrupt corpse. After 1832 it became a peaceful country hamlet.

The People of Mitchell 1851

The people of Mitchell were enumerated in April 1851. There were 183 people, divided into the parishes of St Enoder (101) and Newlyn East (82). The number of people and households has doubled since 1851, this is mainly due to the lead mine a mile to the north at Wheal Rose.

Household 1 Richard Pope Head M 33 Ag Lab born Lanteglos

Household 2 Thomas Courtis Head M 36 Ag Lab born Newlyn

Household 3 Mary Moyle Head U 25 School Mistress born Kenwyn

Household 4 Simon Yeoman Head M 45 Blacksmith born Lower St. Columb

Household 5 William Harris Head M 25 Lead Miner born St. Clements

Household 6 John Curtiss Head M 47 Labourer born Crantock

Household 7 Ann Batten Head W 43 Employed On Farm born St. Dennis

Household 8 William Nancarrow Head M 57 Mason Emp 2 Men born Newlyn

Household 9 John Trenberth Head M 43 Lead Miner born Gwinear

Household 10 Samuel Brabyn Head M 35 Ag Lab born Mawgan

Household 11 Philip Oates Head M 39 Lead Miner born St. Agnes

Household 12 Mary Ann Williams Head W 65 Retired Dressmaker born St. Minver

Household 13 Francis Bassett Head M 28 Innkeeper & Farmer Of 140a born Mitchell

Household 14 Mary Williams Head M 61 Maltster's Wife born Kea

Household 15 Charles Woon Parks Head M 49 Farmer Of 180a Emp 6 Men born Newlyn

Household 16 William Bassett Head M 27 Miner born Roche

Household 17 Henry Henwood Head M 30 Butcher born Newlyn

Household 18 Grace Tamblyn Head W 38 Shopkeeper born St. Erme

Household 19 Michael M Chegwidden Head M 33 Lead Mine Agent born Gwennap

Household 20 John Vincent Head M 60 Retired Farmer born Crantock

Household 21 William Tremayne Head M 31 Lead Mine Agent born St. Mewan

Household 22 Ann Long Head W 48 Grocer born Gwennap

Household 23 William Tremayne Head M 55 Lead Mine Agent born Phillack

Household 24 Timothy Symons Head M 62 Retired Farmer born Grampound

Household 25 William Tamblyn Head M 37 Master Carpenter Emp 1 Man born St. Enoder

Household 26 Elizabeth Merrifield Head W 51 Blacksmith Widow born St. Enoder

Household 27 William Merrifield Head M 28 Blacksmith born St. Erme

Household 28 James Tamblyn Head M 54 Farmer Of 10 a born St. Enoder

Household 29 Richard Manhire Head M 49 Farmer Of 30a Emp 1 Man born St. Enoder

Household 30 John May Head M 53 Ag Lab born Newlyn

Household 31 Richard May Head U 20 Lead Miner born St. Enoder

Household 32 William H Martyn Head M 25 Master Blacksmith Emp 1 Man born Newlyn

Household 33 John Manhire Head M 46 Master Shoemaker Emp 2 Men born St. Enoder

Household 34 William Whetter Head U 57 Ag Lab born Mitchell

Household 35 James Martyn Head M 30 Carpenter (Journeyman) born Mitchell

Household 36 James Oliver Head M 29 Lead Miner born Ladock

Household 37 Amy Francis Head U 70 Annuitant born St. Minver Blind

Household 38 Robert Vincent Head M 25 Maltster Farmer 23a 3 Men born St. Enoder

Household 39 Richard Tabb Head M 35 Lead Miner St. Enoder