Baconsthorpe? I'd never have thought of looking there.* The names (especially the surname "Lane"), home parishes, and dates fit, but I wonder why they married there. I hope to be able to get the licence affidavit, if it still exists, to see if it might answer that question.

But that's for a future post. Right now I want to say thank you to Jean, the FreeREG volunteer who took the time to contact me about a marriage record that's eluded me for months … and I also want to thank the unknown volunteers who are freely giving of their time to transcribe that record and thousands like it.

If you're not familiar with this wonderful resource, here's a brief description from the What is FreeREG page:

Our objective is to provide free Internet searches of baptism, marriage, and burial records, which have been extracted from parish registers and non-conformist church records in the UK. The recording of baptisms, marriages and burials in parish registers began in England in 1538 and is separate and distinct from the civil registration process that began in 1837. (The latter is covered by our companion project FreeBMD) Our aim is to make it easier for researchers, no matter where they are in the world, to locate a specific record relating to their ancestor within a parish register.

<snip>

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.

Again, my thanks to Jean and her FreeREG colleagues. One final note - a tip for searching that Jean passed along to me: It's best to tick the soundex box for the surname, leave the Christian name field empty, and enter a date range if you expect a lot of hits. This is because transcribers are instructed to transcribe as written, with abbreviations, spelling variants, etc., but there is no soundex on the Christian name search like there is on the surname name search.

(Bold font reflects the pre-printed register text, while italicised font indicates hand-written entries. Until I can determine the copyright status and obtain permission to publish excerpts of images on the LDS pilot site, a transcript is the next best thing. This sort of thing, of course, loses a lot in transcription.)

1760 (26)
Banns of Marriage between Now, owing to the idiocy of the Post Office, called Salhouse
No. 101
John Jex of the Parish of Sallows in the County of Norfolk single man and Hannah Cubitt of the Parish of Wells single woman were Married in this Church by Licence this twenty-fourth Day of March in the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and sixty by me Jas. Robinson Rectr.
This Marriage was solemnized between Us
John Jex
Hannah Cubitt
In the Presence of Henry Jackson
Robert Cubitt

Wells Parish Registers: Marriage Register 1754-1787. Norfolk Record Office, PD 679/13. Page 26. Image online at http://pilot.familysearch.org - England, Norfolk Parish Registers, Wells Banns, Marriages 1754-1787. Image 18 of 88. Accessed 2 May 2010.

Update 21 May 2010: I've just found the page in which the images are sourced to the Norfolk Record Office. At the top right of the "browse" page, there is a link entitled "About this collection" which does indeed specify that the Norfolk Record Office is the repository of the original registers. It's entirely possible this was there all the time and I just flat didn't see it; in which case I apologise to the good folks at the FamilySearch pilot site for saying the images weren't sourced to the NRO.

I still have to disagree with their suggested format for citing information found in these images, however, which is linked from that "About this collection" page. The advice and examples do not include the repository of the original documents. I believe that information should always be included in source citations if possible.

I spent a large part of the past weekend happily going through the Parish Register images available on the LDS FamilySearch pilot site. I realised when I started saving some of them, however, that none of the images or registers are sourced to the Norfolk Record Office (NRO) — or if they are, I certainly can't find the citations. There's no mention of the PD numbers that are the NRO catalogue reference.  The only information is down at the bottom of the Parish list, where it says "Collection Description: This collection is made up of parish registers of Norfolk, containing records of christening, marriage and burial entries."

While I am very grateful to the FamilySearch folks for putting the images online, I do feel it is extremely important that the images (or at least the registers) are sourced to the repository of the original documents. However, according to the advice given at familysearch.org in their Research Wiki ( https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Cite_Your_Sources_%28Source_Footnotes%29 ) we should cite the source of records found on the pilot site like this:

Record Search—Pilot Site
11. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "Ohio Deaths, 1908-1953: Phoebe Augsfuerger" in FamilySearch Record Search—Pilot Site at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#deathPlaceId=43;surname=augspurger;p=1;searchType=standard;deathPlace=Ohio%2C%20United%20States;givenName=phoebe (accessed 23 January 2009). Died 28 Apr 1928. Should be Augspurger.

(The link doesn't work; at least not for me. Takes me to the search page; so it's not very useful to me as a citation.)

I believe the document repository should be in the source citation. That's where the actual information is coming from. So I'm going to add that information when I cite information from any of those images on this site. As an example, to cite the 1747 marriage in Shipdham of William Jairy & Elizabeth Sherey, I could have put something like this:

Shipdham Baptisms, Marriages, Burials 1558-1804. Norfolk Record Office. Image online at http://pilot.familysearch.org - England, Norfolk Parish Registers. Image 253 of 253. Accessed 25 April 2010.

But that doesn't give the NRO catalogue reference, which is necessary for correct citation of parish records held at the NRO. (See NRO Information Leaflet 4, "How to cite NRO references" PDF download.)

But how does one find the PD reference when it's not mentioned on the FamilySearch site? Well, there are a couple of ways. Sometimes the PD number is written in pencil on the first or second page of the register, so it's on the image. But even if it isn't, every image shows a tag at the bottom of the page that describes the contents of the register. You can use that, along with the "Set Searches" facility of the Norfolk Record Office online catalogue (NROCAT) to find the PD number.

The Shipdham register in the above example has a tag at the bottom of the images with this information: "SHIPDHAM bapt. and bur. 1558-1804; marr. 1558-1753." and if you look at the middle column on the Familysearch site above the image, the events are Baptisms, Marriages, Burials, and the years in the third column are 1558-1804.

If you go to the NRO site, and look in the section headed "Summaries of collections," you'll see a link to NROCAT. Click that, and on the menu across the top, select "Set searches." A dropdown menu will appear; select "Church of England Parishes." Click on the arrows to open the dropdown menu, scroll down and select Shipdham, then click Search.

Look through the Result List until you find the title and years that match up with the information on the image; in this case, it's the third one down. The title is "Baptisms and Burials, 1558-1804; Marriages, 1558-1753" and the date is 1558-1804. The CatalogueRef is PD 337/1.

With this information, I can complete my source citation. I'll use the title as given in NROCAT first, since that's the location of the actual document, then as given on the LDS site. Since for some reason the links to the images on the FamilySearch site aren't working for me, I'll give the full path to the register, rather than link directly to it, so the image can be found from the search start page:

Shipdham Parish Registers: Baptisms & Burials 1558-1804; Marriages 1558-1753. Norfolk Record Office, PD 337/1. Image online at http://pilot.familysearch.org - England, Norfolk Parish Registers, Shipdham Baptisms, Marriages, Burials 1558-1804, Image 253 of 253. Accessed 25 April 2010.

(Note: Don't make my mistake and leave out the space between the PD and the 3. It's PD 337/1, not PD337/1.)

If I didn't know that the Norfolk Parish Registers were kept at the NRO, I'd be unable to cite it as the repository, of course. So, although I am thankful that the images are online and that we have this wonderful resource, I cringe to think of all the incomplete sourcing this will result in as people use the various image collections.  I hope the FamilySearch site will include the actual names of the document repositories in the future.

This wonderful resource is at

http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start

To get to the Norfolk images, look below the search form & click on "Search or Browse our record collections," then click Europe on the map on the next page. Scroll down the list to the United Kingdom. "England, Norfolk Parish Registers, 1538-1900" is (as of this writing) 2nd from the bottom of the UK list.

You'll see a list of parishes in the left-hand column. Click on the parish you want, then another column will appear with the registers; click the type of event you want, and a third column will appear with the dates available. Then click "Browse (however many) images"

And enjoy!

Please note: Your browser has to have Flash enabled to access the images. Also, I've noticed that trying to save an image while in full-screen mode results in a browser freeze - at least on my Mac.

Source:
Cley next the Sea General Register 1686 - 1744. NRO. PD270. MF694/19.

The census was to be a list of all persons who spent the night of 6 June 1841 in the house, not necessarily of all persons who lived in that house. If a man was at sea overnight, he was probably not listed in his household with the rest of his family.

Page numbers are as printed on the images. In the interest of readability, long comments are noted below the main table.

This will be an ongoing project, and I'll update it as our research catches up.

Comments

*Great page on enumerators' instructions here

Sources

• [1] Stiffkey Register Index. NRO. PD492. HMN6-364: F-L
• [2] Blakeney Parish Registers Marriages 1813-1837. NRO. PD619. MF692/4
• [3] Blakeney Parish Registers Baptisms & Burials 1807 - 1812. NRO. PD619. MF691/29
• [4] Morston Parish Registers. NRO PD478. 1700-1812: Registration of Baptisms 1700-1811; Registration of Marriages 1701-1754; Burials 1700-1812. (Microfiche)
• [5] Blakeney Parish Registers: Baptisms 1813-1840 PD619 MF691/30
• [6] Marriage certificate: Thomas Dew & Jemima Jary. GRO. 1858 Mar Erpingham. Vol 4b, Page 85, Entry no. 127.
• [7] NRO. Probate 1800-1857. Archdeaconry of Norwich Court, 1813; Probate of William Cozens. Microfilm.
• [8] Norfolk Marriages. Hamlin, Philip. Norfolk Family History Society. 2002. CD-ROM.
• [9] Morston Parish Registers Baptisms 1813-1900. NRO. PD478.  MF1000/11
• [10] Cley-Next-the-Sea Parish Registers: Baptisms 1813-1841 PD270 MF694/22

North side of Cley St Margaret's church

South side of Cley St Margaret's Church

Blakeney Sunday 27 October 1772 about three o'clock in the afternoon it thundered very much the claps louder than usual, the wind south-west by west, at half an hour past three o'clock there fell a storm of hail, the hail-stones exceeding large, some measured (by report) four inches in girth, they broke a part of all the glafs windows fronting the west, some the windows they damaged exceedingly, at Langham they did great mifshief to the glafs-windows, in pafsing over the fields they cut the turnip-tops.

The storm continued no longer than five minutes (I think) it went off to sea, did no damage at Wiveton, nor at Cley.

Henry Calthorpe, Rector