The Lancashire Parish Register Society
If you are interested in helping to make accessible and preserve the parish registers of
pre-1837 Lancashire and build a fine collection of volumes in the process then
membership of the Lancashire Parish Register Society is for you.
The Society was formed in 1898 and has published, at the time of writing, 197
volumes either in hardback on microfiche, or on CD. The
publications
contain substantial
parts of the registers of over 100 parishes, printed fairly steadily since 1898. These
include editions of more than 50 of the earliest Lancashire registers, in fact all but one
of the registers commencing in the 16th century have now been printed in part.
The Society's library of
transcripts are kindly stored for us in
Manchester Central Library's Archives Department
which contains copies of many other registers made for the Society and awaiting
publication.
The rate of publications depends essentially on financial
considerations. At present we aim to publish at least two volumes a year, plus as many
as possible on CD.
Aims
The Society's main objectives are to
- Transcribe Lancashire Registers.
- Edit and publish these.
- Give assistance with preservation of the originals.
The work of the Society in transcribing and indexing the registers reduces the wear
and tear on the originals and reduces research time.
Council
The society is adminstered by an elected Council.
Map
You can see the churches for which we have published register transcripts
plotted on a map.
Please note that the numbers on the markers on the map bear no relation to LPRS volume
numbers.
Benefits of membership
Members will receive copies of everything published during each year of paid up membership,
whether in hardback, on microfiche, or on CD; also the opportunity to purchase, at a reduced cost,
previously published volumes that the Society has in its stocks.
Members joining in 2008 will receive:
If you would like to help us further our aims, then please join the society.
E-mail list
We have an e-mail list open to anybody with an
interest in the activities of the society.
Meetings
The society normally has just one meeting in April each year at Manchester Central
Library. This where we discuss anything relevant which has arisen over the year, and
at which we agree which registers are to be published from the list of those that are
transcribed and are ready for publication.
Description of Transcripts
We try to publish the majority of transcripts as printed books, but for particularly large
registers and for some of the later ones it is done on microfiche and CD-ROM. For the first 100 years
we have a used a dark green cover with gold lettering, and following our hundred'th anniversary
(volume 144 onwards) we changed to a maroon cover with gold lettering. When our stocks of
individual printed volumes are exhausted we continue to make the information available by
also providing that volume on microfiche or CD-ROM.
Publications contain three sections:
- An introduction including
- a brief history of the church,
- references to other works covering
such history,
- a description of the registers of which the transcript has been made (including size, binding,
material, dilapidation, gaps in text and current location),
- the dates of any Bishop's Transcripts (BT's) with which the transcript has been collated.
- The register transcripts. These are presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original
register, but arranged into baptisms, marriages and
burials. If any entry is out of sequence, or written
on a fly leaf, it is relocated into the appropropriate chronological place in the text, and an editorial note
inserted. The differences between words in the original register and the BT is indicated by placing the alternative
in square brackets []. Omitted words are indicated by editorial comments. In some of the earlier published volumes
a comparison with the BT was not always undertaken. It is therefore recommended that you should check the BT (where
available) for volumes before 118.
- Three indexes are provided and nowadays these are generated using a special computer based indexing tool.
Transcription Tools
TranReg, the
Windows program that is being developed to assist parish register transcription is now
available for download. There is also an instruction manual describing its use in
detail.
Work in progress
We recognise that the LPRS is not the only transcriber of Lancashire
parish records. To help prevent the wastage of effort that can occur when more than
one group unknowningly transcribe the same registers, we are promoting a scheme which
use the GENUKI church database to
record work in progress. If you know of any
trancripts that are being undertaken, then please use this scheme and thus help avoid
duplication of effort.
Publicity material
If you wish to publicise the work of the society, then we have some
publicity material that you could use.
Registered Charity No 511396
Contact the LPRS Council.
[Last updated Thursday, 01-May-2008 08:56:15 BST - Phil Stringer]
