The joys of Parish Records

[ptjw7]

Today I'm trudging through the Essex Parish Registers and thinking whoever wrote their website has never had to look at loads of records!

Whenever you want to look at a parish you have to select the first initial of the parish, OK the page then jumps and you have to use the mouse to get to the page bottom
You then select the correct parish, page now jumps again
so you use mouse to get to bottom of page to select the Church etc.
The page then jumps and you again use mouse to scroll to page bottom to select relevant register - have small break then continue - you are then presented with small image that is completely unreadable then click on 'Enhance this image(requires subscription) page then jumps to large image.
You trawl around this image - nothing of use - use mouse to go to top left of page to select next image!
This continues until right wrist is to tired to continue and you log out!

Do these people never use what they are offering

Still haven't found what I'm looking for!

Sore wrist Peter

 

[p.risboy]

Whoever looked at the Parish records to index them, did indeed look at them. Perhaps the format needed to be better.

I have transcripts for some of Oxfordshire parishes, these are typed and are PDF files. The type is rather old, so you can guess the condition. Feint, over exposed, blurred.

When looking for baptisms, especially, and you have an approximate year of birth. Could be 5 years either way, or possible even more. It took me almost 2 hours to find what i wanted, sometimes less.......or straight away.

Like Bono, of U2......he "Still hasn't found, what he's looking for".

//

 

[ptjw7]

Trouble with the Stock family of Essex is that there are so many John Stocks around 1850 when my John is supposed to have been born!
I misstakenly thought getting the marriage cert would clear it up - just how wrong can one be.
I was hopping for a Thomas Stock as father but got a Joseph which I cannot locate -hence the search of parish records.
None of this is helped by John changing his place of birth in most census records.
The first census I believe it is him said he was born in Hatfield which I always thought was wrong but I now think he meant Hatfield Broad Oak which is near Great Canfield that he used on other census.
If I can locate parents then I have a mammoth task of deletions!

Peter

 

[p.risboy]

Have you traced John Stock's wife's family.?

Steve.

 

[ptjw7]

Yes Alice Dorothia Rawlings - at least that side holds up😁
Peter

 

[p.risboy]

The reason I ask, is it possible that one her siblings married a brother or sister, of John Stock.

Grasping straws here.

//

 

[ptjw7]

I have tried all permutations but the best bet is if a Thomas
Stock is in fact Joseph Thomas Stock but not found any links like that 😭
Peter

 

[emeltee]

It is always possible that whoever wrote the name down got it wrong!

 

[ptjw7]

Thinking about this pot messs last night I remembered 2 stories my wife had told to her by her grandmother.
The first was that she went somewhere to see if she was really married as apparently someone had changed their name, due apparently due to desertion. I could never find any links to her husbands family that fitted but perhaps I never looked far enough back.
The second thing was when the wife was at school one of her class mates was a girl with surname Lodge and her grab said she was a cousin, again I could find no link. But on John Stocks marriage both witnesses were Lodges.
All very puzzling.
Peter

 

[p.risboy]

Is John Stock a Lodge then. Or was his father a Lodge.......or even his mother a Lodge. Perhaps John Stock never knew his father.......if he was illegitimate.
I think I'm losing the plot.

//

 

[ptjw7]

Welcome to the club - this whole family is a mystery.
Even the first born son I have been unable to find a birth for, the second born Martha is present on the 1881 census but not George born 1878 supposedly in Dunmow.
I think I will pass on this part of the family - brick walls are to hard!