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THIS is perhaps the one thing that flummoxes newcomers to genealogy more than anything else. To understand the IGI and how it works, you must first understand what it is and what it is not. The IGI did not start out as an index for genealogists; it has become one by the goodwill of the LDS Church in making it available to all, whether church members or not. Its principal purpose is to act as a record of certain ceremonies which have taken place within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (otherwise known as the LDS or the Mormons) which need not concern us here. Suffice to know that these are to do with the LDS beliefs of baptising their ancestors by proxy into the Mormon Church. To this end they have collected millions of entries from parish registers and Bishops' Transcripts and also from their own members. So the IGI falls into two very distinct parts..... 1) What is called the "controlled extraction" program from parish registers and BTs. 2) Private, or patron, submissions from church members. The vital thing to remember when using the IGI is that entries which are from the controlled extraction program can generally be regarded as accurate, whilst private patron submissions are to be treated with extreme caution! There seems to be a belief among some newcomers that the IGI is the be-all and end-all of ancestry research. IT ISN'T! It is precisely what it says - an index only and must only ever be used in conjunction with other research. The vital column to look at is that headed "Batch". If you know how to read the batch codes, you can tell whether the entries are from the controlled extraction program or from private submissions. Those codes beginning with C, K or J are taken from a christening (baptismal) register; those headed M or E are from a marriage register; and those headed P are from a printed copy or typed manuscript of a register. * NOTE that P does not mean "private" as many people seem to think. All-numerical codes and those beginning with A or F are church member submissions and should, therefore, be treated with some caution. When reading the IGI on the FamilySearch website, you should always go to the "Source Call" link, click on it and you will be taken to another screen inside the Family History Library Catalogue. This will tell you the precise source of the entry, i.e. whether from a parish register or a "patron submission". I have noted when going to the "Source Call" that many entries seem to have been filmed from the Bishop's Transcripts rather than the registers (BTs were copies of the registers sent annually by the incumbent to the Bishop). This is because in the early days of the IGI when many parish registers were still in the hands of the incumbents, many clerics would not allow the Mormons to film their registers, so they had to go to the BTs which were usually in the County Record Office or Diocesan Record Office (which are often the same thing). The batch numbers are very important in two respects...1) in helping you to trace ancestors; and 2) establishing the original source of the records. Always remember that the IGI is a very valuable tool as an Index, but it is exactly that and NOT a primary source. You must always check anything you find on the IGI with the original records.When reading the IGI on fiche you can ignore the three columns headed B, S and E (baptism, sealing and endowment), since these are references to the private events within the Mormon Church that I have referred to. But remember not to confuse the LDS baptismal date with the actual date of baptism. The only relevance of those columns to us as genealogists is where you see an entry headed "Infant" or "Child" which normally means the named child died under the age of 8 and church ordinances were not performed. In FamilySearch online, once you have obtained a batch number which relates to film of a particular parish register - let's say a christening register - what you do is this:- go to CUSTOM SEARCH and select the IGI. Then by entering in the appropriate search boxes the batch number, a region, country and county (actually, you can dispense with the country and county as long as you enter the region and batch number), you can enter in the name boxes merely a surname and it should give you all the references to that surname within that particular parish. Further, by entering a father's name - and sometimes a mother's name, but not always, since the name of the mother often wasn't given - it should give you all the children born to a particular couple in that parish. But do beware, of course, that if it is a fairly common surname there may well be more than one man, or one couple, of the same name in a parish. Often if you get a batch code beginning with, say, C, by simply changing the letter to an M or an E you may well get the marriage register for that parish, likewise you may get a printed register by changing the initial letter to a P. To re-emphasise my point about patron submissions, in particular, treat like the plague any entries with the dreaded word "relative" alongside them!!! These are mostly very old entries on the IGI and are the most unreliable of all. In the early days, Mormons were encouraged to submit as many entries as they could for ordinances. They collected references from far and wide and submitted everyone of the same surname, describing themselves as a "relative" whether there was any proven blood relationship or not. This often leads the unwary to try and build family trees from the IGI - something you should never do. Some unwary newcomers see an entry for, say, a Fred Bloggs married in a particular parish, with the appendage "Relative Joe Bloggs" alongside it, then find other entries for the children of a Fred Bloggs in another parish 30 miles away, with the same "Relative Joe Bloggs" alongside, and assume that the entries are for the same man. It ain't necessarily so!!!!! It may well be two entirely different Fred Bloggses, but Joe Bloggs in his enthusiasm to submit as many ancestors as possible for sealing and endowment has simply assumed they are the same person because they have the same name. It was also a curious belief of LDS submitters in the early days that everyone of the same surname must be members of the same family - genealogical nonsense, of course. But to be fair to the LDS, they have now tightened up their procedures considerably. Also ignore like the plague those entries which use the word "About", since these are dangerously misleading. They are notoriously unreliable, being no more than guesses arrived at by subtracting 25 years in the case of a man and 21 years for a woman from a marriage date to arrive at a supposed birth date. I have seen examples where this has happened and the.actual birth date has been out by 30, 40 or even 50 years, when a man or woman has married late in life. Finally, always check any entry you find on the IGI against the films of the original registers. There are two very good reasons for this - 1) to ensure what you found on the IGI is accurate and 2) because parish register entries so often give greater information than the IGI. For example, if you are lucky enough to find Dade Registers (which I mentioned in Part 3) they will give you an additional wealth of information compared with the bald entry on the IGI. © Roy Stockdill 2000
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