According to my notes Roman Catholic Parish records for Freshford begin on Jan 12th, 1773 and it just so happens that when I went looking at these records on the first day this week I had forgotten to move a copy of the records that I had from my old computer to my laptop.

So, when I got to the records I couldn’t read the first few pages, 1775 was the first year I could read.

The records are a movable feast!  I began working at 1775, got what seem to be very few records for 1776, then went on to 1788, then they went back to 1786 and then into 1787.  I just kept transcribing away at whatever I could read.

These records for the most part do not contain the name of the mother, they are in English, Name of child, name of father, placename and date.  EXCEPT when I got home after my second day of transcribing and when I went to my old records I found I had already worked this section of these parish registers AND the section I had worked previously HAD the name of the mother!

I have combined both sets of records into one file BECAUSE the last thing that I have noticed is that both sets are different.  The set of records I worked which had the mother’s name seems to have other names as well, that is names not included in the records I transcribed over the last few days.

I do realise that this may seem confusing for those of you who think that this is all a very simple job of just transcribing what you see, but, if I put up one set of records then you will wonder where your record that you know should be in these records are or you would wonder why there are extra records.

I can only assume that someone made a transcription of the hand written notes and the first time I worked these records it was with the transcription which definitely would have been much easier to read.

In some ways, these records may seem confusing because I actually have a place name in the area where I would or should have had the mothers name for some of them.  The references with no mothers name are the ones I transcribed this week.  If the name is repeated and then includes a Mother’s name then that comes from the set of records I transcribed in the past.  The set of records taken this week has a number in the area where there should have been a place, that number represents the page I was working on.  I actually have different numbers for the earlier set of records.

I did not manage to read any record for 1772