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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.
About the Society
The Society was formed in 1898 and has published over 300 volumes of parish register transcriptions, either in hardback or on Compact Disk.
These publications contain substantial parts of the registers of over a hundred parishes, printed fairly steadily since 1898. They include editions of more than fifty of the earliest Lancashire registers – in fact all the registers for the 16th century have now been printed. There are four awaiting completion for the 17th century. Transcripts or indexes of many registers made for the Society and waiting publication are available in the Society’s library of transcripts kindly stored for us in Manchester Central Library’s Archives Department.
The rate of publication 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, Edit, and Publish Lancashire Registers and 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.
If you would like to help us further our aims, then please join the society.
Council
The society is administered by an elected Council.
Benefits of membership
Members will receive copies of everything published during each year of paid up membership, whether in hardback, or on CD, also the opportunity to purchase, at a reduced cost, previously published volumes that the Society has in its stocks.
Meetings
The society normally has just one meeting in April each year . 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.
The minutes of recent meetings are available.
Description of Transcripts
The society tries 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 CD-ROM.
When our stocks of individual printed volumes are exhausted we continue to make the information available by also providing that volume on 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 appropriate 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.
- Surnames
- Place names
- Miscellaneous entries (including occupations).
Registers Work in Progress
List of parishes in progress and recent releases
The society recognizes 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 unknowingly transcribe the same registers.