Tuesday 29 August 2017

Registry of Deeds Index reaches important milestone

The Registry of Deeds Index Project reached an important milestone this month, with more than quarter of a million index entries (251,433 to be precise) now available to freely search. Each entry has been contributed by volunteer researchers.

These indexed entries come from just over 28,000 memorials of deeds.

While the latest milestone is worthy of celebration and the volunteers certainly deserve a hearty round of applause, the scale of the task still remaining is vast. The Registry of Deeds collection comprises more than 800,000 memorials of deeds dating before 1832, and many more after that date, so there is still much to do.

Fortunately, recent changes at FamilySearch have made contributing to the Index Project much easier. Nick Reddan FIGRS, the founder of the project, encourages all researchers to view some images of the memorial books via the FamilySearch site, and contribute entries to the Index Project for the benefit of other genealogists. You'll find guidance on how to do this (here).