25 August 2011

Liverpool Quaker and England Apprenticeship records new on Ancestry

Two new British data sets debuted on Ancestry.

 
39,049 records are from Liverpool, England, Quaker Registers, 1635-1958. Quaker records are usually considered to be carefully kept. According to Ancestry's documentation 
Records in this database include birth, marriage, and burial records, as well as membership records and Monthly Meeting minutes. Membership records include Inward Certificates, detailing names of people joining a new Meeting and including the name of the Meeting where the person previously resided; Outward Certificates, recording people leaving one Meeting for another; and Membership Lists, which provide a snapshot of a Meeting’s membership at a particular time. 
Monthly Meeting minutes are available through browse only, though each book does start with an alphabetical index. Most minutes are from the Hardshaw West Monthly Meeting.
The larger collection, 523,575 records, is England, Register of Duties Paid for Apprentices' Indentures, 1710-1811.  Chris Paton found this item first and blogged on it at http://goo.gl/HJj5x

With tongue firmly planted in cheek I'll comment that Chris appears burdened by an affliction especially virulent amongst the Scots, acquired perhaps through being nurtured on a surfeit of oats. Both Chris and Audrey Collins dwell on the exact meaning of terms describing the political and administrative geography of the British Isles. Audrey has a whole webinar on it here.

For the non-specialist Michael Flanders said it best, encapsulated in the use in headlines "Another triumph for Britain" or "England loses again."

1 comment:

Chris Paton said...

It's not an affliction John. If a collection is named as being one for 'England', Scots and Welsh folk are not likely to look at it; indeed, neither are my own folk back in Ireland. I raised that very point with Ancestry yesterday - they have agreed, and have now changed the title of the collection to "UK, Register of Duties Paid for Apprentices' Indentures, 1710-1811".

Even that is technically wrong, as the records are for Britain alone - though if you notice the update to my original entry on this you will see that I have found four records already of folk from Ireland in the collection - three of them from a period before there even was a United Kingdom.

If a collection was labelled for Winnipeg or Ontario, but was in fact perfectly valid for the whole of Canada, I'm sure the same point might perhaps be discussed elsewhere!

Incidentally, the same record collection is freely found on the National Archives Digital Microfilms site; and half of it on the FindmyPast website, where it is listed very helpfully as "Apprentices of Great Britain".

Chris