The Library
Society Projects
The Society has run projects over many years - current projects include the following;-
- The Business Index
- This new project is an index to British shopkeepers, businessmen and women and their companies. The primary source material is a series of books published in the 1890s by the Brighton firm of Robinson, Son and Pike which later became W T Pike. They seem to have traveled to large towns and cities all over the British Isles, offering the local corporation and businesses the opportunity to appear in a book containing a history of the area, its attractions, major institutions and its commercial life. There are sometimes details of town councillors, often with vignette-sized photographs and one has a picture of the local football team! Shops, businesses and manufacturers probably had to pay for inclusion, the amount depending on the size of the entry. The proprietor or manager seems to have been visited at work and interviewed to provide the copy for the book.
- Trade directories only contain a bare listing of all local businesses but those included in Pike’s books have a minimum of a paragraph about each shop etc, often showing a photograph of it or the proprietor and there are frequently details of when and from whom the business was acquired (often a named relative). Family members working in the business are usually given and, if a person is prominent in local society, the entry often mentions membership of the corporation and leisure activities including involvement with clubs, charities and other institutions. This kind of information tells a lot about an individual’s character and is extremely difficult to find elsewhere in such a comprehensive form. The illustrations are photographs of people and places which were taken for the purpose or acquired from local sources and often include line drawings of products sold by the business.
- These books are now extremely rare, since, like trade directories, they rapidly became out of date and were therefore discarded. The British Library catalogue only shows one compendium volume for south London. Luckily, many library catalogues are now available on the Internet and show that some copies have survived in local studies libraries and other institutions around the country.
- If you spot one of the volumes in this series for sale by a local bookseller, please contact the Librarian on 020-7702 5484 in case it is one we do not yet have. They are usually slim volumes of no more than half an inch across the spine and about 10 inches tall. The titles will be either “A descriptive account of ...” or “An illustrated account of ...”
- If any member would like to help with this indexing project, please contact the Librarian by email or post at the Society. You will be loaned a scan of a book on CD-ROM which can be opened in Adobe Acrobat Reader®, a Microsoft Excel© template, instructions and a copyright waiver form to sign.
- St Andrew Holborn: marriage records index
- The church of St Andrew, Holborn is the largest of Wren's parish churches and stands at the western end of Holborn Viaduct by Holborn Circus. It also served one of the biggest parishes in London (it actually spanned the boundary of London and Middlesex) out of which five new parishes were eventually formed. The registers are large and contain many thousands of entries, as the parish has always been a popular place to marry. More significantly, the entries from the marriage registers do not appear on the International Genealogical Index or in Boyd's Marriage Index. Pallot's Marriage index has entries for 1780-1837 but these give only year and omit many of the details from the original registers. It is for these reasons that the Society of Genealogists has decided to embark on the project to transcribe and index the registers.
- Colin Allen is leading this project. Anyone interested in taking part is invited to contact him or Else Churchill at the Society.
more information
- Civil Service Evidences of Age: index conversion
- The huge amount of effort already put in by volunteers to collate, sort and record the evidences of age for persons taking the examinations to enter the Civil Service has already been set out in the Genealogists' Magazine of September 2002. This work has resulted in a typed surname index which has been converted into a database that could facilitate ready access on the internet to this unique genealogical resource. It is planned to make this dataset available on the Internet some time in the future.
- Great Western Railway shareholders index 1835-1935
- The Great Western Railway kept details of the changes of shareholders in a large number of ledgers, called Probate Books, covering the period 1835 to 1935. 90% of the entries refer to changes resulting from deaths in England and Wales, however, the remainder relate to marriages, changes of name, powers of attorney and to events occurring in Scotland, Ireland and around the world. Each entry refers to at least two people in addition to the shareholder. In a number of the entries, relationships are given or may be inferred. See an example.
- There are over 170,000 names covering events from 1824 to 1935 in the whole collection. It must be noted that the names are those shareholders, their executors and others and that there are almost no railway employees other than very senior managers.
- The books themselves are in poor condition, very dirty, and are not fit for production. It will be necessary to scan or film them, and this is being investigated, but the open folios are appreciably larger than A2 size, and information is lost when scanned at A2 size.
- Currently, much of the material that has been transcribed is waiting for checking, and is not yet available for searching. The index will comprise, for each entry, the surname, first names, date and place of event with the reference to the volume and folio concerned. The intention is to make the index available in electronic form once checking is complete.
- The project is being overseen by Frank Hardy, and anyone interested in assisting in transcribing or checking should contact him at the Society. All work will have to be done within the Library due to the condition of the books.
- Canterbury Peculiars: marriage licence index
- This is a current project to index and publish a surname index to the marriage licences issued in various peculiars which came under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury. These peculiars included the deanery of Bocking (Essex), the deanery of the Arches (London), Shoreham (Kent) and Croydon (Surrey and Middlesex). Lambeth Palace Library have completed the index for Bocking and volunteers at the Society are now finalising the remaining peculiars. Work should be completed during 2003.
- Settlement Examination Books for St Martin in the Fields.
- Volunteers are needed to type up a card index to the Settlement Examination Books for St Martin in the Fields. These books are an important source of information for genealogists and may include details such as a person's birthplace, the names and ages of any dependent children, details of movement between parishes and other personal information that it would be impossible to find from any other source. The Settlement Examination books for St Martin in the Fields have survived for the period 1708-1795 and 1816-1827 and the Index for 1750-1775 is already online.
- The card index that shortly needs to be typed up covers the period 1705-1732 and has been prepared by volunteers at the City of Westminster Archives Centre. Anyone interested in helping would need a computer running Microsoft Word (a template will be provided) and be able to pick up and return the cards to the Society. Your help would be greatly appreciated, both by ourselves and the City of Westminster Archives Centre. If you would like to help or need any further information please contact Tim Lawrence (020 7702 5485) or by email.
- Typing and Indexing
- The Society is always looking for volunteers to carry out typing and indexing projects. These range from relatively small individual items to creating major databases. Most of the projects nowadays require the use of a PC, and software such as Microsoft Word. If you would like to be put on a list of volunteers who can help in this way please email your details to the Voluteer Co-ordinator