The Transcriptions Project (General)

by fredb, Wednesday, October 24, 2007, 09:10 (6242 days ago) @ monfamilies

For those of you who may not have come across Mike John before, (I imagine you have with Monmouthshire being our neighbour) he personally must have saved individuals incredible amounts of time by providing information about someones family tree often without being asked directly. That or he has pointed people in the direction of the invaluble data he has amassed at his monfamilies / my family history web sites.

We have all benifited from the genorousity of people such as Mike, and those who are here at his FOD website, and I for one would welcome anything he has to offer. With so much of West Dean BMD being registered in Monmouth, this on going project to supply information regarding these overlapping Parish records will be hugely benificial for anyone researching in this area.

Anyone who goes to the Monmouthshire Family History site will not find anything like this, the information isn't up front, that's why Mike Johns site proved more valuable to me, I could search for myself if he didn't offer the information.

It's the same for most counties it seems, or at least the ones I have researched. But here we have people hard at work simply trying to make it easy (and cheap) to find out details of their families past.

I would love to see a website like this that covered the Monmouth area, the area this side of Raglan which seems to be almost an other county, much like The Forest of Dean cut off by the Severn like the poor relation of Gloucestershire. The old photos found here must be so valuable to those on the other side of the world who may never see where their family came from. Maybe there could be a section here for photos that would take in the areas covered by this new transcription project? It makes sense.

I'm not sure if I'm correct in saying that Census and Parish information is "Our Information" it is our right to be able to access and see it, and while I am happy to pay for any service that helps me find out more, is information being held and used purely for financial gain? I suppose the answer is yes.

Thanks to all of you who helped when I was starting out on my quest to find out more, I try where ever possible to help anyone I can, it's wonderful that some people are so generous with their time. cheers Fred Beach