Archive CD Books Parish Register Series
Above: A typical marriage register of the late 1700s
One of the most useful resources for family historians are the parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials.
Records in England began in 1538, and continue to the present day.
The original parish registers are almost always stored for safe keeping in one of the many county record offices. The original registers can be viewed by the public, but understandably, the archivists are reluctant to allow handling of these old and unique books. Many of the registers have been microfilmed, but the films are not easily accessible, again being stored at the relevant county record office, and some with the LDS.
Some, but by no means all, parish registers have been indexed, and such indexes contain just a name and a date together with the name of the parish. Those indexes are pointers to the real records, which of course contain much more additional information. Many of the indexes (especially the IGI) have errors. Indexes by family history societies are the most reliable.
Starting in the late 1800s many parish registers (although far from all) were transcribed and published in books. These are particularly excellent, as they include abstracts from the actual registers, with much more information for the genealogist!
Like this:
w = widow or widower
lic.= marriage by licence - a pointer to other valuable resources
And the place of residence of the parties to the marriage is also shown,
giving possibilities for further research.
That's tremendous extra detail for the genealogist that can never be seen by using indexes only.
Archive CD Books has literally hundreds of these old books scanned and available on CD, and what's more, they are all fully searchable!