This is one of four projects that we are supporting as part of our fourth annual Transcription Tuesday event on Tuesday 4 February 2020. Click here to learn about the other three projects.
About FamilySearch:
FamilySearch is one of the largest family history organisations in the world, providing all of its services free to the global family history community.
Not only do we film and preserve records, we try to make these valuable resources easily accessible online through our volunteer indexing programme.
Since FamilySearch began indexing in 2006, our wonderful volunteers have produced more than one billion searchable records.
Hundreds of thousands of volunteer indexers have participated from around the world.
Through this selfless effort, millions of people worldwide have found information and discovered stories about their ancestors.
About the project:
This Transcription Tuesday we need your help in transcribing our collection of nonconformist records from counties in England.
We have been capturing these records since the late 1940s, and on this occasion, will be focusing mainly on nonconformist records from Essex, Gloucestershire, Lancashire, Northumberland and Norfolk.
The records are not available yet but will be published on FamilySearch in the run-up to Transcription Tuesday.
These church records come from Methodist, Protestant, Baptist, Quaker, Unitarian, and Presbyterian religious groups and more, with some records dating back to the 1600s.
After these records are indexed, they will be reviewed and added to the FamilySearch website where they can be searched by visitors to our site.
FamilySearch will also use the indexed records to generate hints to help people find records of their nonconformist ancestors without even searching the collection.
Some of these records are very like Church of England Parish Registers and are straightforward to transcribe.
Others, like Quaker marriage records, have a different format but still easy to work with.
On the FamilySearch Indexing pages, we provide simple project instructions and sample images to help you should you have questions.
There are other help articles and handwriting helps as well.
All you need to do is log into FamilySearch or register for a free FamilySearch account.
Go to the Indexing section, then Find a Project, click on Europe, then United Kingdom.
You will then see a list of indexing projects, select a project and then click on Start Indexing.
Each project has simple instructions which you should review and then start indexing.
It doesn’t take long to be comfortable with the process and make a lasting contribution.
We appreciate all the support given by volunteers in previous Transcription Tuesdays and look forward to another successful event this year.
Need more help? Don't miss our step-by-step guide to transcribing FamilySearch records