North Bradley, Wiltshire 1600 - 1837

This set of records is work in progress to list all of the records from one parish, North Bradley in Wiltshire. The first stage was to enter all of the birth data, initially using the Wiltshire Family History Society index fiches. This is being compared with the original data as shown in fiche from the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office. The Birth Comments give a transcription of the record and a reference to the fiche used. Where this fiche is not clear the WFHS is used to extend it until a better source can be found. In some cases the IGI transcription has been consulted.

There are many cases where more than one child in a family was baptized on the same day and in many cases it is not possible to deduce their relative age. On the family tree diagram this is shown by connecting the siblings with a green line, a GenoPro Emotional Relationship.

Families have been deduced from information about parents. In many cases only the father is named. Where it seems probable that a later record is linked, and the mother is named, this has often been added to the family. The report then links this mother to all other children in the family; this may be incorrect. One way to check if a mother is identified is to read the General Notes for an individual (opened from the blue arrow shown on the right ) The alternative is to look at the family tree diagram; if a mother is named for any of the children then her symbol is coloured yellow. Any of the children where she is named has a corresponding quarter coloured yellow.

Marriage information has been added, using WSRO fiche. The entries in the register are transcribed in the Comment section. The format of these varies with time and the aim of the transcription has been to record the main information, not a complete record which would include standard data such as 'Married in this Church'. Where the husband is recorded as widow(er) it has confirmed that in some cases a man has married two or even three times.

Records of burial are available from the WFHS fiche and also the National Burial Index. A start has been made to add this information here, using these sources as guides but basing the data on transcriptions of WSRO fiche. Where a record can not be related to an existing family it is placed in an appropriate position and coloured blue to indicate the person is only known from the burial data. Where possible an arrow or link is added to suggest possible identity

Transcription problems The fiche used are of varying quality and parts are difficult or impossible to read. This is partly due to discolouring which is particularly noticeable on parts of some pages at the edges. This is made more difficult by variation of the lighting across a page, which can be made worse by vignetting in the fiche reader. However moving parts to the centre of the screen does little to solve these problems. In addition there are gaps in the records where either words have been rubbed out or the ink has disappeared.

When making the transcriptions, which are placed in the Comment fields, The objective has been to show the format of the entry, using the same capital letters and line breaks. Where names are written as abbreviations (usually indicated by a colon : but also by a full stop) this is recorded but the full name is used for the individual. The main abbreviations are Eliza: Jo: Rich: and Tho:. The use of Saml: has caused the WFHS to transcribe as Saul in some cases.

Where the entry is not clear on the fiche the 'Uncertain character format',as defined by FreeBMD is used. See http://www.freebmd.org.uk/Format.shtml#ucf. This is mainly the use of the character * to represent one word and the underscore _ for a single letter. In some cases the original WFHS entry fills the gaps