West Middlesex Family History Society

Indexing Projects

The main focus of current project work relating to parish registers is the digitisation of existing transcripts that have been created by individuals and groups of members over the years. The West Middlesex Marriage Index is now complete for our area and is available for all to access via FindMyPast. However the Society has only recently embarked on project work to produce corresponding indexes for baptism and burial records for West Middlesex parishes.

Pilot projects were launched in 2005, focussing on the baptism and burial registers for the parishes of Harmondsworth, Harlington and East Bedfont, prior to 1837. Further work has since been carried out for the burials of Isleworth over the same period, parts of the baptism and burial registers for Hillingdon, and many records of baptisms and burials recorded in the registers of non-conformist chapels across the West Middlesex area. With the generous assistance of our friends in the Sunbury and Shepperton Local History Society, we have also been able to include baptisms (1565-1807) and burials (1565-1799) for Sunbury. We have been grateful too, for the assistance of the Spelthorne U3A group, who have provided further records of burials from parishes within the modern Borough of Spelthorne.

Work on the burial registers has been carried out within the framework set out by the Federation of Family History Societies National Burial Index project, using the SHROUD software. The results of this work are already available online, via FindMyPast. A local version of the index - the beginnings of a West Middlesex Burial Index - is accessible at our meetings and at Open Days and family history fairs. Work is under way on the burial registers for Hillingdon. However more volunteers willing to help with the digitisation of these and similar transcripts are always welcome. If you are familiar with the use of parish registers and are happy to use SHROUD or spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel, the Society would be very pleased to hear from you. Please contact the Society.

Work on the baptism records is less well advanced, although a pilot West Middlesex Baptism Index has been prepared from the registers of Harmondsworth, Harlington, East Bedfont and Sunbury. Once again, the Society would welcome further assistance from volunteers to help extend the scope of this indexing project. Please contact the Society if you can help.