Parish Baptisms

[JimPat]

I have just read your latest newsletter about England and Wales parish record online. I saw with interest the map of England for Findmypast. Lancashire is coloured blue, the area I am particularly interested in is Liverpool, but Findmypast only has baptisms for St.Anne's.
Ancestry has all Catholic baptisms up to 1906 and marriages up to 1921.
I used Findmypast over the weekend as it was free I found it very good. When I asked when they were the parish records for Liverpool they could not give me an answer.
JimPat

 

[peter]

The areas in blue are ones for which they don't have parish register images. They may have transcriptions for those areas, but it is very variable - it generally depends whether they have done a deal with the local family history society.

However if you're looking for Catholic registers they're generally not held by the local record office, but are in the diocesan archives. Findmypast have recently announced a big deal with the Catholic church but it isn't clear what areas it will extend to.

 

[JimPat]

Thank you for your reply I have been in touch with Findmypast but they cannot say when they would have them for Liverpool Lancashire.
There was a site Liverpool History Projects but it appears to be down at the moment.

 

[peter]

Thank you for your reply I have been in touch with Findmypast but they cannot say when they would have them for Liverpool Lancashire.

Are you talking about Catholic registers or Liverpool registers generally? Ancestry currently have exclusive rights to the registers held by Liverpool Record Office, and I don't suppose that is likely to change any time soon. As far as I know there is only one record office which has licensed records to more than one provider, and that's Norfolk.

 

[JimPat]

Maybe I was being a bit petty here but FindmyPast stated they had the largest parish records. My point was that they only had Liverpool Baptisms for St.Anne Richmond, but as you rightly said Ancestry have them. When you say exclusive rights, does that mean no other genealogy site can have them online.

 

[peter]

Maybe I was being a bit petty here but FindmyPast stated they had the largest parish records. My point was that they only had Liverpool Baptisms for St.Anne Richmond, but as you rightly said Ancestry have them.

I imagine Ancestry have the second largest collection.

When you say exclusive rights, does that mean no other genealogy site can have them online.

Precisely - it's like the author of a book going through a single publisher.

This is why most researchers have to subscribe to both sites at some point. Most peoples' ancestors don't conveniently come from counties whose registers are online at one site or another.

In my case I have ancestors from Devon, Hertfordshire, and north-west Kent (registers online at Findmypast), from Oxfordshire and London (registers online at Ancestry), Essex (registers online at Essex Ancestors, but not indexed), Suffolk (not online at all yet), and north east Kent (not online at all yet).