Ancestry release Suffolk parish registers on Friday 8th August

We’ve all been waiting for digitised images of Suffolk’s massive collection of parish registers (and hopefully Bishop’s Transcripts too) for a very long time.

The wait is nearly over – they will be released on Ancestry, with an index, on Friday 8th August.

It is very exciting, but I’ve written before about my issues with how error-strewn indexing can be on Ancestry. Since I wrote that, I found an entire page of baptisms on there where the index said all the children were bastards. The only reason I can think for this mistake is because the indexer misread “baptised” as “bastard”. *sigh*

Anyway, here’s a nice photo of a Suffolk church….

More Long Melford marriages

Marriages from 1701 to 1753 are now online!

I transcribed marriages from 1717-1753 over a decade ago, so I’ve revised and updated them, as well as added marriages from 1701-1716. There’s nearly 600 for you to look through, and they include several people from Essex, so maybe you’ll knock down some pesky brickwalls!

Detail from "The Comforts of Matrimony". Copyright Trustees of the British Museum

Image: “The Comforts of Matrimony, a good toast” by Thomas Rowlandson, 1809. © Trustees of the British Museum.