Norfolk Family History Society's new online records

The Norfolk Family History Society are beginning to make the transcripts of parish registers held in their library available online. Members of the society can now access the first offerings at
http://www.norfolkfhs.org.uk/membersarea/intro.asp

I spent a large part of last week in the record offices in Cambridge and Lincoln. I was pleased to see Cambridge have added some new parish register transcripts to their already impressive collection. Compiled by the Cambridge Family History Society the new series include parishes from in and around Wisbech. As the original registers for most of these are held at the Wisbech and Fenland Museum and the films (where they exist) are often poor quality, this is very welcome news.

One of the parishes I searched in Lincoln was Whaplode. The vicar there had a habit of including comments about some of his parishioners on the entries. One great example was the baptism in 1817 of William "the bastard son of Maria Lown a widow". The vicar went on to say "NB. This abandoned Woman might be Married, but will not. The Banns of Marriage have been published, but she prefers a state of Prostitution! Remarking, or having remarked, that she is already a Whore; & can be no worse. Therefore she will remain as she is".

This will undoubtedly appear in my upcoming course on marriage records with Pharos, along with my theories on why she might have refused to marry, and how such records can be used to find out more about our ancestors.