Our talk this month was from Dennis Cook and on a slightly different theme to our usual talks. So far most talks have been stories based on the research and findings on the lives, events and social history of our ancestors. Dennis’s fascinating talk was about his experience as a transcriber for FreeReg. Like several of our members I have used FreeReg in the past but not really appreciated where and when it is best used. Dennis clarified that beautifully. The transcribers are all volunteers who transcribe in their chosen areas or counties. This has the disadvantage that in some areas there are few volunteers so the coverage is poor. The major advantages are that being volunteers and being familiar with the areas they transcribe for, the quality of the transcription is significantly better than in some other subscription databases. FreeReg also makes provision for all the information on the records being transcribed. For example it includes witnesses at weddings and if people sign or make their marks. The old adage is “always look at the image” partly because of the additional information it usually contains but also to check you agree with the transcription. With FreeReg you do not get the image but I am now more confident the transcription is more likely to be correct and probably better than I could do. After several pages of someone’s poor or stylised handwriting the transcriber will see a pattern and gain a better understanding of it. In addition to that the images are often available on other sites, but with less or no information transcribed. Dennis also identified several examples of the lengths he would go to check the transcription was correct including checking old maps, statutory records and census data. AI may get there sometime but it has a long way to go. Another advantage in transcribing all the records in one parish is that Dennis could download the data to a spreadsheet, analyse it and compare it with other parishes. We had fun trying to guess the top occupations in different parishes. Several people have told me they went home after the meeting and looked at FreeReg, as I did. (whereas I should have written this article and published it immediately before I forgot some of the stuff Dennis told us!)
Next month we will have another talk from Bernard this time something on the Royal Navy in WW2. March I will talk about a civil trial challenging a will in 1917 “Dan The Dreamer”. In May or June We will probably have another session with tables of five with everyone talking for about five minutes about an object, picture or event. Start thinking about what you can talk about now!!