Recording Lives: Exploring the Depths of Parish Registers

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Historians can use the parish register of baptisms, or marriages, or burials primary sources to tell the story of a place or a community, which includes history dissertation help. The parish registers of England serve as great resources to access information on baptisms, marriages, or and burials (Sagers, 2016). Until the introduction of the civil registration in July 1837, parish registers serves as the major source for tracing family history (Sagers, 2016). Parish records will revealed the name and details of the spouses. They will reveal the place and date of the marriage. They will reveal the bond and the names of the bondsmen, and close relations of the spouses (Sagers, 2016). They will reveal events related to christening in a family. The date of the christening, name of a child’s parents, place of residence or occupation of the father could also be accessed (Sagers, 2016). They reveal details of deaths occurred in a family. They will disclose the deceased’s name, burial date, cause of death, their age, place of residence, and also mother’s maiden name. They have information of any death of a child. They may disclose still births and infants who were not christened (Sagers, 2016). Thus, Parish records are of great importance to local historians who would want demographic data needed for properly understanding a particular community (Hey, 2014).

There were certain practices followed while recording and compiling parish records. The manner of recording depended on the events, which might have been categorised as a life event and other events. Understandably, most important parish registers are that of baptism, marriage and burial. Marriage was treated a life event and as such a marriage register was the only register that record a life event at the time the marriage occurred. Record of baptism may occur any time after birth and before death. Record of burials may occur between 3 or 4 days after demise. Delays can occur in case of frozen ground, contagious disease or foul play (Kent County Council, 2020). Thus, parish registers followed different timings as to the events that they were recording.

A historian understands that original registers are kept in the individual parishes. They are locally held registers (ROOTSIRELAND, 2020).They may be with the incumbent or with a local record office (Kent County Council, 2020). One parish may differ from another parish because of the shape and size or because of the representation of the concerned community. Parish records, thus, represent the national estimates of demographic behaviour (Samson & Canada, 1998).

Using parish records, thus, grant certain advantages over other sources in regard to the records of the community in an area. Parish records encompass a variety of records, from personal details to marriage events and from baptism events to burial. It not only record personal details of the parties involved in an events, but also discloses information immediate linked to the event. Parish records will be more able to describe the demographic characteristics of a region. This is demonstrated by the fact the Parish records will show an overestimation of the population of an area than the estimate shown by the census. The reason is that Parish record also captures the residents of the area as well as those in occupation who reside outside the boundary of the area. It will capture workers in that area and workers beyond that area. As a result, it can show the manner of occupation and recruitment and the type of workers required for that occupation, and also the permanent or temporary nature of occupation (Samson & Canada, 1998). Parish records are also a good source to study patterns of mortality amongst adults and infants, patterns of marriages, disclosing information about seasonal marriages and age groups, and even seasonal diseases that cause deaths and the cause of deaths. They also disclose social and economic norms and decisions, where higher economic opportunities lead to earlier marriages (Samson & Canada, 1998).

The fact that one parish differs from another and the fact that they was no standard rule applicable across parishes may present a flaw in the parish recording system. For example, registers might be difficult to decipher. Format to record names and addresses were not standardised. This may create difficulty in a complete family reconstitution (ROOTSIRELAND, 2020). In such case, complete names of a person may not have been mentioned. Further, it is only a few original parish registers that are indexed. So, normally large urban areas have bulky parish records. It would be difficult to search in those (Kent County Council, 2020).

Bibliography

• Hey, D., 2014. Family History and Local History in England. Taylor & Francis.
• Kent County Council, 2020. New to parish registers? A guide to parish registers held at the Kent History and Library Centre. [Online] Available at: https://www.kent.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/16246/New-to-parish-registers.pdf [Accessed 24 October 2020].
• ROOTSIRELAND, 2020. Church Records. [Online] Available at: https://www.rootsireland.ie/help/help-church-records/ [Accessed 24 October 2020].
• Sagers, D., 2016. English Parish Records: How to Access, Use, and Interpret Them. [Online] Available at: https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/english-parish-records-access-interpret/ [Accessed 24 October 2020 ].
• Samson, R. & Canada, P., 1998. The Forges Du Saint-Maurice: Beginnings of the Iron and Steel Industry in Canada, 1730-1883. Canadian Heritage.

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The importance of an oral history interview could be demonstrated by how much the public came of know of Jews genocide. There are multiple online platforms where such interviews are available, and not only historian but also the general public come to know about the events that occurred.

Historians can use oral history interview to tell the story of a place or a community. Oral history interview presents a record of an uninterrupted oral account of life experiences in the own words of the interviewee. They may disclose the intimate information, such as information about troubled personal relationship or struggle to escape social ills, like human traffickers. Thus, awell documented oral history interview can disclose firsthand experiences and knowledge of people, time and places (MacKay et al., 2013).

Oral history interview bridges oral traditions and written history, and it ensures continuity of old memories and stories. For example, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities have oral traditions. They reveal historical and day-to-day records of the people, including the arts and current cultural practices. One comes to know about how they share their stories through rock and sand art, song and dance, body painting, carvings and masks amongst other things. Through oral histories, one comes to know about the belief of a community, clan rituals, or stories of their early contact with colonists (Queensland Government, 2018). Likewise, in Britain the 1970s oral history has become a key component in community histories. Early folk collections related to minority groups, such as Gaelic speakers are results of oral history interviews. Oral history interviews are source of black and ethnic minority and LGBT histories and even history of medicine for the 1990s oral historians. Similarly, they were source of undocumented lives of working-class people for the 1960s labour historians (Making History, 2008).

Historians are aware that oral history interviews are mostly compiled by a person outside the subject community or place. This has happened with compilation of oral stories of African women by foreign scholars (Armitage et al., 2002). As the interviewers are mostly outsiders, they are not familiar with the culture, language, and taboos of or assumptions about the community or the persons being interviewed (Armitage et al., 2002). This may reduce the ability to access the personal experience and stories in a personal way. In most case, when compiling stories of a community, it is the tapes and project transcripts become handy (Sitton et al., 2011).

Comparatively, oral history interviews offer advantages of using the sources compared with other types of sources. They are more valuable methods for restoring private and also collective memory of a particular community. This method is particularly helpful when there are multiple narratives to a memory. It helps in better understanding of the social and process and history of that community and encourages discovering new facts. It also explores different perspective from different individuals about common events (Zamorski & Kurkowska-Budzan, 2009). This advantage cannot be related with written records, which may not be able to uncover hidden stories. Written records may also hold some level of bias against the community being interviewed and may not be able to reveal details about majority of lives (Making History, 2008).

Irrespective of the advantages and the importance of oral history interview, it may have certain – flaws and missed certain values of a story. Oral history interviews present issues concerning accuracy of the memory in respect to being treated as an historical source (Making History, 2008). Oral history interviews also face the problem of catalogue with lack of standard guidelines to record information (MacKay et al., 2016). The fact that oral history interviews are mostly compiled by an outsider, the record may not appropriately present the culture and social process of a place or a community. In addition, have an assumption about the community may also create some biasness. Such assumption may affect the perceptiveness and validity of the oral history interviews (Armitage et al., 2002). The correctness of oral history interviews depends on the quality and quantity of transmission of information. Such transmission depends on the power of memories of the successive generations. Thus, an oral tradition may not be able to maintain the same value of the oral history (Klaebe, 2006). Thus, the value of information and the events and the way they are transmitted between generations may keep changing.

Bibliography

• Armitage, S.H., Hart, P. & Weathermon, K., 2002. Women's Oral History: The Frontiers Reader. University of Nebraska Press.
• Klaebe, H., 2006. Sharing Stories: Problmes and potentials of oral history and digital storytelling and the writer/producer's role in constructing a public place. [Online] Available at: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/16364/1/Helen_Klaebe_Thesis.pdf [Accessed 24 October 2020].
• MacKay, N., Quinlan, M.K. & Sommer, B.W., 2013. After the Interview in Community Oral History. Left Coast Press.
• MacKay, N., Quinlan, M.K. & Sommer, B.W., 2016. After the Interview in Community Oral History. Taylor & Francis.
• Making History, 2008. The making of oral history: Sections 1–2. [Online] Available at: https://archives.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/oral_history.html [Accessed 24 October 2020].
• Queensland Government, 2018. Oral histories in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. [Online] Available at: https://www.qcaa.qld.edu.au/about/k-12-policies/aboriginal-torres-strait-islander-perspectives/resources/oral-histories [Accessed 24 October 2020].
• Sitton, T., Mehaffy, G.L. & O.L. Davis, J., 2011. Oral History: A Guide for Teachers (and Others). University of Texas Press.
• Zamorski, K. & Kurkowska-Budzan, M., 2009. Oral History: The Challenges of Dialogue. John Benjamins Pub.

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