Birth, Marriage & Death Records - A Guide for Family Historians by David Annal and Audrey Collins

Description

Birth, Marriage and Death Records are an essential resource for family historians, and this handbook is an authoritative introduction to them. It explains the original motives for registering these milestones in individual lives, describes how these record-keeping systems evolved, and shows how they can be explored and interpreted.

Authors David Annal and Audrey Collins guide researchers through the difficulties they may encounter in understanding the documentation. They recount the history of parish registers from their origin in Tudor times, they look at how civil registration was organised in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and they explain how the system in England and Wales differs from those in Scotland and Ireland.

The record-keeping practised by nonconformist and foreign churches, in communities overseas and the military is also explained, as are the systems of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Other useful sources of evidence for births, marriages and deaths are explored and, of course, the authors assess the online sites that researchers can turn to for help in this crucial area of family history research.

*An accessible introduction to a key subject for family historians
*Explains the history of Parish Registers and Civil Registration
*Describes how the record systems work in every region of the British Isles
*Covers the online databases and websites

Paperback published by Pen and Sword