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Purpose |
The Data |
The Team |
The Organization |
Only a record that satisfies the specific criteria supplied to the search engine will be made available on the Internet, not complete sets of data for a church.
Because of concerns over copyright, every reasonable possible precaution has been made to prevent access to the complete database. Therefore, it is not possible to request a search that provides all of the records for one church or parish, nor to do a search for everyone whose name begins with "A", then "B" etc. In addition, FreeREG is not involved in the publication, in any form whatsoever, of whole or partial photographic copies of registers, whole or partial transcripts, or even an index to the records of a parish. For such complete transcriptions, where these exist, the researcher should contact either the appropriate local County Records Offices or the relevant Family History Societies.
What is possible with FreeREG is for an individual researcher to enter an ancestor's name, specify a search for a baptism, marriage or burial, state a date range to search, state a county, (and optionally, narrow it down to one town or village), and then search the database for the match using those criteria.
The FreeREG database is just a finding tool. It should not be considered to be *proof*, or indeed that the information is 100% accurate, or contains all of the information in the actual register. Once you have found a record, then write to the relevant Family History Society or County Record Office, who, for a small fee, will generally obtain a print from the original register for you.
As a result of reading this you have more specific questions. Some of these will have been addressed already in our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
FreeREG is a part of the FreeUKGEN Project and a companion to FreeBMD (which is a database of the GRO birth, marriage and death indexes from 1837} and FreeCEN (which is a database of census information).
Important Note: FreeREG is a new project. We currently have only a few million records in the database, (just to start things off), so you should not expect to find all your ancestors in the database yet.
To make FreeREG an effective tool we are in URGENT need
of volunteers willing to undertake the transcription of registers or
make available transcriptions that they have already completed. (See
Contributing to the Project)
The Data.
There are three FreeREG databases, one each
for baptisms, marriages and burials. For additional explanations, descriptions and examples, of English and Welsh parish
registers, and help with transcribing please refer to the following pages on the
British Genealogy Website
Baptisms |
The data contained in the baptism database
comprises:
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Marriages |
The data contained in the marriages database
comprises:
For items not included in the database, we suggest looking at a copy of the original marriage registers on microfiche/film. That is always advisable anyway!
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Burials |
The data contained in the burials database
comprises:
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The Users of FreeREG owe a debt of gratitude to the originators of the project, namely Rod Neep, Ben Laurie,
Camilla Gemmingen von Massenbach, Brian Randell and Phil Stringer.
The current personnel involved in coordinating the project are David Mayall, Dave Newbury Eric Dickens and Kirk Dawson.
As with any large project the many activities being undertaken by a variety of
volunteers requires an organizational structure to keep all work carefully focused on the objectives
of FreeREG.
Project coordinators
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Country coordinators Web Page coordinator Database coordinator
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County coordinators Web Page Editors Data Manager Database Developers
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Data Providers Mailing List Admin. Data Editors
Some of these positions are still vacant.
| Country coordinators | Liaise with project coordinators, county coordinators and web page editors |
England - David Newbury |
| County coordinators | Liaise with Country coordinators and volunteers to obtain register data for the
county and with web page editors to keep county pages up to date. |
See County Page for list of names and Counties vacant. Also see: County coordinators Responsibilities Page for additional information. |
| Data Providers | Volunteers who transcribe registers and submit data to the County coordinators or to the Data Editors) |
Anyone and everyone - the most important job. |
| Web Pages coordinator | Oversees general structure and presentation of web pages and liases with the web page editors. |
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| Web Page Editors | Maintains a group of specific webpages such as the County Pages, FAQ pages, etc. | |
| Discussion Forum and Mailing List Administrators | Moderates discussion fora and managing mailing lists,dealing with problem subscribe and unsubscribe messages, handling error messages and rejected messages. |
Main FreeREG Discussion Forum |
| Database Coordinator | Overseeing the database aspect of the project. |
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| Data Manager | Overseeing final data entry into the database |
Vacant |
| Database Developers | Database programmers |
More needed! Contact Ben Laurie |
| Data Editors | Convert data from non-standard format into our format as csv files. See Data Editors |
More needed! for the moment contact David Newbury |
| FreeREG is kindly hosted by The Bunker and supported by Roots Web, www.Ancestry.co.uk, www.british-genealogy.com and Parish Chest |
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