12 September 2014

More Lancashire Cemetery Records at Deceased Online.com

Information on 350,000 burials and cremations now added to Deceasedonline.com is courtesy of Richard Gray.

"Blackburn with Darwen burial and cremation records available on family history website
One of the North West's first councils to digitize records for global access
All burial and cremation records for Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council have been digitized and added to the specialist family history website www.deceasedonline.com.
Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council (BDBC) is a large area in the county of Lancashire, a little to the north of Greater Manchester and sandwiched between the City of Preston and Borough of Burnley. With a rich cultural and social history, the area is strongly associated with the industrial revolution throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and particularly textiles and was nicknamed 'Cotton Town'.
The digitized records on Deceased Online are for all three cemeteries and crematorium managed by BDBC : Blackburn Cemetery (aka Whalley New Road); Darwen Cemetery; Pleasington Cemetery; and Pleasington Crematorium. In total, there are records for nearly 350,000 burials and cremations representing over 1 million data items which comprise
Digital scans of all burial and cremation registers
Details of each grave indicating all those buried in each grave
Maps indicating the section within each cemetery where each grave is located
All records from the first burial in each site
The earliest records date from 1859 and the latest are from 2003.
Users of the Deceased Online website can search the database for free and if and when they find the searched-for subject, they can then choose to pay a modest fee for records which can be downloaded and saved. This means that global researchers are able to access the records 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
Previously, searches for these records would have had to have been done manually in old, large registers and Council staff undertaking this work would charge rates depending on the level of work required. The availability of the online digitized records means that Council staff will no longer need to do this and the rates paid by researchers via the website are less than those previously charged.
In addition, under statutory legislation, burial and cremation records need to be managed and preserved by all local authorities so their digitization and online availability mean that the Council has protected the records for future access and for staff administration.
The North West and Blackburn and Darwen areas have a rich history and are very popular with family historians and genealogists with many countries worldwide.
Deceased Online has digitized records for other nearby authorities including Bolton, Cheshire West and Chester and Trafford and other major local councils will also be adding their records to the website in the near future."

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