Anglican Registers Project
The Anglican Church has had a presence in New Brunswick since 1768 when the Rev. John Eagleson was sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to minister to the people living in the Tantramar area of present-day New Brunswick. Many more priests arrived in 1783 along with the United Empire Loyalists and as they established new congregations they started recording many of the events of church life - baptisms, confirmations, marriages, burials and others. Beginning in the 1960s the Anglican Diocese of Fredericton attempted to gather and preserve these records and, while the process is not complete, there are now 755 registers of various types being held by the Diocesan Archives. (You can read more about the history of the Diocesan Archives by clicking here.)
In May 2018 the New Brunswick Genealogical Society and the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, which now manages the Anglican records on behalf of the Diocesan Archives, agreed to scan and transcribe the many registers and then to make them available to the public on the NBGS website. Recruitment of a technical team and a large group of transcribers started in August 2018 and, following a pilot phase, the transcription project got under way in January 2019.
Many of the registers are very fragile and require delicate handling. Scanning these registers and then enhancing the images takes a lot of human resources and some expensive equipment. As of September 2019 over 360 of the registers have been scanned and sent to NBGS and more arrive periodically. These registers require considerable processing before they are assigned to transcribers and the Project Status report shows the number that are actually available.
Project Status
This report is based on the processing status log - an internal system-generated tracking mechanism. The processing status log is updated automatically as registers are being transcribed.
The records have been scanned for some errors and anomalies. If problems were found "issues" were created for the records. An issue was also created if a record was flagged by the transcriber or proof reader as needing review.
| Number of Registers Ready for Assignment |
232 |
| Number of Spreadsheets Ready for Assignment |
310 (some registers have multiple spreadsheets) |
| Number of Spreadsheets Completed |
183 |
| Number of Records Processed |
162,226 |
| Records with proofing done |
124,728 (76.9%) |
| Total Number of Issues in the Records |
2,289 |
| Open Issues in the Records |
1,618 (70.7%) |
| Names in name index |
381,449 |
| Last Extraction Date |
04-Nov-19 |
Project Completion Report
| Expected Number of Registers |
755 |
| Expected Number of Spreadsheets |
1,008 |
| Remaining Number of Spreadsheets |
792 |
| Average Spreadsheets Completed per Day |
0.748 |
| Estimated Days Remaining in Project |
1,051 |
| Project Start Date |
15 Jan 2019 |
| Expected Completion Date |
21 Sept 2022 |
Search Facility
A fully-functional search facility was rolled out to a small group of testers in September 2019. The testers quickly identified a number of issues, some of which were resolved through further programming while others needed intervention at the spreadsheet level. The Technical Team is currently working their way through the remaining issues.
Because of the number of issues unearthed, we have decided to expand the size of the testing group quite significantly. This group will put the search facility through its paces for the next couple of months with the hope that all major issues will be identified and resolved in that period.
Our current objective is to be able to roll out the search facility to all members by 1 February 2020. Of course, this depends on our progress on problem resolution. The roll out of the rudimentary search facility to non-members will lag some months behind the members' facility.
The search facility will fully implement the privacy rules used by the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick.
