29,525
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
====Online records and transcriptions====
=== Missionary and Non-Conformist Church records, including the Church of Scotland ===
===Other records===
no edit summary
[[Image:Marriage cert St Pauls Calcutta.jpg|thumb|300px|Certificate of an 1885 marriage]]
==Records at the British Library=====Accuracy===
The ecclesiatical records in the India Office collection are transcriptions of registers from churches in India, sent to London for administrative purposes. As such, there are occasional transcription errors.
Note that the name of godparents are entered only occasionally on copies of baptisms in the Ecclesiastical Returns held at the British Library. This information is, however, generally available from the church registers in India.
==Records at the British Library=Year of record may differ from year of event===The year a record was sent to England (which determines the Volume in which the record is located) may occasionally be later than the year in which the event took place, sometimes, for remote locations, by many years. Records a year or two late are more common. This fact may be of significance when locating a record in a microfilm, if you do not know full details.
===Access at the British Library===
Microfilmed copies of all the records are available for public inspection and indexes are on the open shelves of the Asian & African Studies Reading Room, broken down by [[Presidency]], alphabetically and by year. Records are catalogued under the 'N' series (ie, the references for ecclesiastical records being with N), under the heading [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=059-iorn&cid=-1#-1 Ecclesiastical Returns]
The [[British Library]] article contains visiting tips and information.
*'''The commercial website [[findmypast]] digitised the India Office Church records and they were released online on 29 January 2014.''' Due to the fact that more recent records may contain details for individuals who are still living, the website findmypast host only a basic index for birth/baptism records within 100 years and marriage records under 84 years. <ref> [http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/britishinindia/index.html The British In India Collection]bl.uk </ref>
*Many of the indexes have been previously transcribed by FIBIS Volunteers and are available in the [http://www.search.fibis.org/frontis/bin/index.php FIBIS Search database] under the heading Ecclesiastical Records.
This India List [http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/INDIA/2010-01/1263410424 post] gives further details.
It may be noted that a number of independent [[missionary]] and non-conformist churches were requested to return their BMD records to the presidency authorities. The latter considered it necessary to record proof of relationships of its employees for official purposes such as rights to pension, etc. A number of priests refused to do this, largely on the grounds of time taken and of cost. Accordingly, many of their vital events are not recorded in the APAC today. Foremost among these are the records of the large numbers of Catholic soldiers who used the missionary churches during the thirty years or so before emancipation. To obtain details from these ‘missing’ records, it is necessary to visit the church where the ceremony was performed and to apply to see the original register.
Some Church of Scotland Bombay church records and records for St Andrew's Church of Scotland, Madras may be found in [[LDS Microfilms of Church registers in India]], but it seems the records for St Andrew's Church of Scotland in Calcutta have not been filmed and are only obtainable from the church, refer [[Calcutta#Churches and missions|Calcutta-Churches and missions]].
*''Bengal Past and Present: Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society'', available at the [[British Library]] has lists of baptisms, marriages and burials based on the original church registers in Calcutta, up to 1800. They are probably mostly covered by the Ecclesiastical Returns in the B.L., however there may be some additional entries which never made it to England (e.g. the ship carrying the returns to England was lost). There are also some biographical details. Some of the lists are available online on the [[Online books#Digital Library of India| Digital Library of India]] website.
**[http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/cmadge/Baptisms%20in%20Calcutta%201767-1777.pdf Baptisms 1767 -1777] and [http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/cmadge/Baptisms%20in%20Calcutta%201778-1782.pdf Baptisms 1778-1782] Transcriptions from Registers of St John's, Calcutta by E W Madge as they appeared in ''Bengal Past and Present''<ref>Available on the [[Online books#Digital Library of India| Digital Library of India]] website. ''Bengal Past and Present Volume 25, Parts I and II (Series nos 49-50) January-June 1923'', pages 130-155 and ''Volume 26, part 2, 1923'', pages 142-168, DLI computer pages 45-71</ref> – this link is to website of Madge Family of Bengal. Each listing contains many pages of biographical notes (13 and 16 pages respectively). The first page of the second document lists articles in other volumes of BP&P containing transcriptions of baptisms, marriages and burials to 1800.
