Am I doing this wrong? Re 30/3/21 Masterclass Tracking down pre-1837 baptisms and marriages

[cfbandit]

Hi all! Its been awhile since I hung out here so I hope you will forgive my absence here!

I have a sticky problem with an early family near Prestwold, Leicestershire. I am not hoping for help in finding additional people, but am wondering if I could get some assistance in seeing if I'm following the masterclass correctly because I can't seem to find people in it I know are there. I've got the original parish records from reading the unindexed images at FMP that have the baptisms of four children. In each, they are identified as children of John Heacock of Burton, which I've determined to be now called Burton on the Wolds, right next to Prestwold.

1. I used the IGI link to search for other members of the family in the IGI. I did not find any. So I then...
2. Went to Steve Archers site and found Prestwold, and found that it has a batch of 1947 entries from 1578-1836, so I tried the batch to find marriages. Didn't find any.
3. So then I tried the batch to find the baptisms that I know I have the parish records for. Also didn't find these.

It made me think there are two possible scenarios:
1. That the indexing in the IGI was really that bad and they're indexed wrong. I've tried all sorts of wildcard searches, first name only, last name only, city only, etc. and not found anything.
2. That I'm missing something, or not quite got it right

I used the parish locator and it identified a few other parishes in the area. But I wasn't sure if I should search them as well because I have the parish records and they are from Prestwold, not the other locations.

Parish Name Type, County, Country,OsRef Distance & Direction
=========== =========================== In Miles =========
Hoton P LEI ENG SK5722 0.6 0.0 North
Prestwold P LEI ENG SK5721 0.0 0.0
Rempstone P NTT ENG SK5724 1.9 0.0 North
Walton on the Wold P LEI ENG SK5920 1.4 116.0 East by S

Any advice would be most welcome! The two of us working on this case think we have a very good lead for this family being a generation of the right time period for our eighth great grandmother's parents and siblings. So we are very interested in fully developing the family, including a potential wife for the father listed.

And in the meantime, I'll keep learning how to read church Latin, lol...

 

[peter]

The first thing to check is whether there are any baptisms in that batch from that parish for the relevant period.

 

[Pauline]

It looks to me as though the entries for Prestwold at FamilySearch may be from the BTs, in which case there will be missing years. So as Peter says, check the entries for that batch number only for the time period that your baptisms took place. This is often the quickest way to check for missing years.

Also, if there are any entries in the right time period, check in the details of each entry for the film number, and then check in the catalogue to see what is on that film. The ones I looked at were from the BTs but those may have been in a different time period from your interest.

 

[Pauline]

I've just followed up on the 4 baptisms you mention at FMP and see now that they were all in the 1650s. These were actually all births rather than baptisms, recorded during the Commonwealth period, and there wouldn't have been any BTs then. This FamilySearch batch has no entries between 1640 and 1659 which is as you'd expect when the entries are from BTs.

 

[cfbandit]

I've just followed up on the 4 baptisms you mention at FMP and see now that they were all in the 1650s. These were actually all births rather than baptisms, recorded during the Commonwealth period, and there wouldn't have been any BTs then. This FamilySearch batch has no entries between 1640 and 1659 which is as you'd expect when the entries are from BTs.

I knew I'd be doing something wrong lol. So that's the issue. Did you just start looking through the batch? I saw the Prestwold file started in 1573 so I thought it would cover the time period but freely admit I didn't think to actually look at the other entries to see how far they went back.

 

[Pauline]

Did you just start looking through the batch?

You'd mentioned that it was an early family, so I think I initially searched the batch for something like 1600-1700. Quite a lot of entries came up but I picked a few at random to look at the details and these all had the same film number. I then checked that film number in the catalogue and found these entries had been extracted from the BTs, whereas you had said you'd extracted your births from the parish register (and I don't think FMP don't have BTs for Prestwold).

It was then likely that the records you were looking for at FamilySearch were simply not there, because the BTs for those particular years were missing.

The earliest baptisms I found in this batch were in 1578 (as expected) but the records are by no means complete from that date onwards. Sometimes the catalogue entry will detail where there are significant gaps, but not in this case so trial and error may be necessary.

There are other places where you may find more detailed information on coverage, such as the archives catalogue or the National Index of Parish Registers for the county, but even those won't usually mention gaps of just one or two years.

 

[cfbandit]

Seriously thank you! These are the kinds of tips you just can't get in a class or masterclass

 

[peter]

Seriously thank you! These are the kinds of tips you just can't get in a class or masterclass

They certainly should be in a Masterclass, though not necessarily the one you've just read - there is also a 'brick walls' Masterclass which focuses on exceptions to the norm.

But the latest Masterclass did suggest searching a batch without specifying a surname - this is halfway to identifying gaps in coverage. More generally, always familiarise yourself with the records you're using - understanding what they do and don't include is important, especially since Search forms often include fields which are missing from the data. I routinely search for the surname Smith when I want to get a basic understanding of a record set.

Finally, when posting questions on the forum (or writing to me for help) always provide key details such as dates - this saves others time.