A short post.
For those of you who research Suffolk Records, Ancestry's recent release of four Suffolk BMD datasets will be very welcome, not least because it means that if, like me, you don't live in Suffolk, you should be able to avoid the long journey to Suffolk Archives in Ipswich.
Before this release the most extensive collection of Suffolk Parish Register records available online were the datasets to be found on FindMyPast. Those were created from data collected by the Suffolk Family History Society, but were only indexes so you could not be sure that all the information in the original records had been captured. The new Ancestry datasets are recently digitised and contain digital images of the documents the records are found within, meaning it is possible to browse them and extract precise archive reference codes.
The new datasets are:
Suffolk, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1949 [https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62754]
Suffolk, England, Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-1999 [https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62751]
Suffolk, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 [https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62753]
Suffolk, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1924 [https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62755]
These new datasets bring two main advantages:
they provide high quality online images of all pages of the relevant source documents allowing the researcher to have greater confidence in the records found, and to identify whether other information than the core data is present (annotations in the margin for example), and
they extend the period covered by online Suffolk datasets to include the oldest parish registers - in many parishes the data earlier provided by Suffolk FHS to FindMyPast did not include the oldest register books.
Of course these new datasets still suffer from gaps in the records. For example, the Suffolk, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 dataset has a gap in it affecting my ancestors where the images of the Capel St Mary Combined Register 1538-1812 skip from 1753 straight to 1810 (see image below), even though the FindMyPast dataset has a transcription record of my 3rd great grandmother's baptism there in 1808.
Be prepared for some unexpected finds because some of the records in these datasets are not from parish registers. For example, the Suffolk, England, Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-1999 dataset records that John Owen was buried in Stratford St Andrew in 1956, but the associated document image is of a Certificate for Burial or Cremation.
These new datasets are a result of Suffolk Archives digitisation projects conducted with Ancestry. Other records will also be digitised, including Bishop's Transcripts (where I expect to find Elizabeth Bickmore's 1808 baptism). For more information about Suffolk Archives' push for digitisation of their records, see https://www.suffolkarchives.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Ancestry-FAQ-Final.pdf
Julian Luttrell
The Tree Sleuths, 2025. The Tree Sleuths website.
