This a truly remarkable collection, 18 million parish records dating from 1538 to 1980 from over a 1000 Greater London parishes have today been published on Ancestry.co.uk.
Part of the London Historical Records, 1500s-1900s collection published in partnership with London Metropolitan Archives and the Guildhall Library Manuscripts, this is really going to be a great asset to family history research. I can see that these indexed images are going to open up so much new information that was previously hidden within the sprawling mass that was/is London.
Speaking from personal experience I know how easy it is to lose people in London, but my first search in the new collection turned up three of the six missing baptisms for children of my 3x great grandfather Thomas KINGHORN, including the elusive Wybrants KINGHORN (recorded here as Webrens).
Given time I will no doubt be able to take this further and find the other three baptisms and I am sure marriages and burials will also follow. For now I have not only baptism dates, but birth dates and two new addresses (both in Upper Charlton Street, St Mary-le-bone) for the KINGHORN family.
Just like London itself I can see it is going to take some time to find my way around, and I think I could quite easily get lost in this collection for days on end.
I was too scared to look in case the parishes/timeframes I’m after aren’t in this release. Although they’ve included a lot of parishes it doesn’t seem to be very many years from each parish, so I’m trying to contain my excitement – won’t have time to have a good look for a couple of weeks. It’s wonderful though, since those of us overseas had no way of accessing LMA records until this initiative.
Hi Alex, I know what you mean, I was surprised to find the records I did. It is still a mystery to me quite what is and isn’t included in this collection.