EAST OF ENGLAND
Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk
Ancestry £ ancestry.co.uk
A recent addition to Ancestry is the Norfolk collection of over 4 million records (1538-1985), much of which is also on Findmypast and TheGenealogist.
Essex Ancestors seax.essexcc.gov.uk
The Essex Record Office’s online service provides digital images of parish registers, wills and more. The website has flaws, but its simplicity is also a strength. There are some 590,000 images of parish registers from Essex here, including parts of historic Essex now in London. You can shell out £ 85 for a year’s access, £10 for 24 hours, or £20 for a week. You can explore via a drop- down list of parishes, but you may find it easier to use the register indexes on FamilySearch ( familysearch.org/ search/collection /1465709).
FamilySearch familysearch.org
Alongside the Essex parish indexes ( see above), the site also has Norfolk registers, bishops’ transcripts and
nonconformist registers, as well as bishops’ transcripts for Cambridgeshire (1599-1860).
Findmypast £ findmypast.co.uk
Has Herts registers, bishops’ transcripts and banns drawn from collections held at Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies ( HALS), while HALS itself has a simple marriages/ licences index (15381922) and copies are £10 each to order. Findmypast also has Cambridgeshire transcripts (baptisms, marriages, banns and burials) and indexes for Suffolk (from SFHS), plus it recently added Norfolk indexes and images through partnership with Norfolk Record Office.
FreeREG freereg.org.uk
Includes registers for Bedfordshire (269,696), Cambridgeshire (765,574), Essex (1,011,826), Hertfordshire (240,801), Norfolk ( 5,538,419) and Suffolk (216,054).
TheGenealogist £ thegenealogist.co.uk
In 2016, it added a final tranche to its Norfolk Parish Records collection in partnership with the Norfolk Record Office, taking the total to over 9.8 million. These were parishes in the Diocese of Norwich and included some Suffolk parishes in and around Lowestoft, and part of the Diocese of Ely. By spring 2016, it had more than 2.5 million Essex parish transcripts, and in February 2017 over 282,000 individuals were added to the Parish Record Collection with material from Essex, Norfolk and Cumberland.
Society of Genealogists sog.org.uk
SoG Online has Boyd’s Marriage Indexes, which covers parishes across the region, and has other transcriptions of registers from parishes in other counties, particularly Norfolk and Suffolk.