Parish Registers: boaters' churches

Tracing Family History: NarrowBoat, Summer 2006

Lorna York

Lorna York continues her quest for boating ancestors

Having found our most recent ancestors by consulting the General Register Office index (Spring 2006 Narrowboat), we can now start to go further back in time. However, before July 1837 there was no national index for Births, Marriages & Deaths, so how do we find in which parish church our boating ancestors were hatched, matched and dispatched? There is an invaluable tool which gives information on parish records: the International Genealogical Index, more commonly known as the IGI. The index was compiled by the Church of Latter Day Saints, or the Mormon Church. Copies of the IGI can be found at their local Family History Centres, where the staff are very helpful in explaining how it works. Each county is indexed alphabetically, but not every parish has been covered, and not all the information is correct – as it may have been entered incorrectly – so you should always check with original sources. It can also be found on the Internet at www.familysearch.org. Also on thi…