Dates before 1752 in Forest of Dean Parish RegistTranscripts (General)

by admin , Forest of Dean, Wednesday, December 02, 2009, 13:01 (5545 days ago) @ tjbet

The main reason why we decided to list the old style dates the way we have done is so people are able to search for a record by 'Year' or 'Year Range'. For example, if you were searching for the the baptism of a person by entering 1661 in the search box it would return no matches, if we had listed the year in the 1661/62 format.

The way it is now you will at least be able to search and find the person you are seeking and we do make a note to the effect that it is an old style date.

In order to have nearly 800,000 records in a database which people can search through with ease and speed, a few little compromises had to be made. You will surely agree, in making these few compromises and having all these records available that you can almost instantly search through, is much more convenient than going to the Archives offices and searching through thousands of records using a microfiche reader with the hope of finding the one you are seeking.

I agree, it is important to strive to be as accurate as possible and this is our aim, but when you transcribe details from old original records and put them on a website in a medium they were never intended for, you must allow for some minor variations.

The following is on our main Parish Records web page.

Disclaimer
As with any transcript, please use this data as an aid to your research only, and not as a definitive source. Therefore, if you find some information of interest, we strongly recommend you check the original source for yourself to verify that the information is correct as we cannot accept responsibility for any inaccuracy it may contain.
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