29,533
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
→Background
The first British church in India was St Mary's in [[Fort St George]], [[Madras]], which was consecrated in 1680. Many other churches were established after that date and records exist for most of them from the time of their consecration. Every year on Lady Day (25th March), British churches were required to send copies of their ecclesiastical records to the capital city of each Presidency. The Presidencies then indexed the records and sent them to the India Office in London (now [[APAC]] at the [[British Library]]). The Mormons have microfilmed all the ecclesiastical records, including the indices, and made them available to Mormons and non-Mormons alike.
A large number of British Library India Office records are now available online on the LDS website. Refer [[IGI]] for details. However, it appears not all the British Library India Office records are listed on the LDS website. In particular,there appear to be no records shown for dates of birth within the last one hundred yearsfrom 2010, or marriages within the last seventy five yearsfrom 2010. (Records have not been updated since 2010). Currently there is no list of those India Office records which are included online on the LDS website. Accordingly you may wish to search the British Library India Office records.Note however the records sent to England declined in number from the early 1930s with minimal numbers sent to England in the 1940s.
==Index==
The first step is to determine which Presidency your ancestor lived in, as each one is indexed separately. If you have no idea, then start with [[Bengal]], which was the largest Presidency. If that doesn't work out, try [[Bombay]] and finally, [[Madras]]. If you have a location name and are a member of the INDIA-L Mailing List then you could ask its helpful members for advice on which Presidency to search, or try the Locations section of the FIBIS website.
