Afternoon, May 5, 2009 - Tampa

Afternoon from Tampa…

I spent some time this morning volunteering at the nearby Family History Center in Lutz. I’m usually there on Thursdays. It’s a wee bit north of my house, about a 15-minute drive… extremely convenient for researching genealogy documentation available at the Family History Library (FHL) in Utah.

And I’m working on one of the number of microfilms relating to the Parish of St. Patrick's in Grenada. These are16mm microfilms numbered FHL1523479 and FHL1523480. The microfilms are a collection of Civil Registers of Births and Deaths titled Civil Registration, 1866-1933 and images of manuscripts at the District Registrar of St. Patrick, Sauteurs, Grenada, in the West Indies. And as it is a 16mm microfilm it is packed with page after page of registration entries.

The main issue with these Registers is that the Birth Registrations typically do not include the name of the child, only whether the child was either male or female. It does include the date and place of the birth and the name of the parent and/or parents, and at times the mother’s maiden name, and father’s occupation. This appears to be the general rule with civil birth registrations throughout Grenada. (I was only able to find my father's registration entry as I knew his birth date and the names of his parents, my grandparents.)

At this point I have been able to review 21 Items; four on FHL1523479 and 17 on FHL1523480. An Item is sort of a chapter in an FHL microfilm. In this case each Item appears to be a separate Register. And of those 21 Items / Registers I have found 106 entries in the St. Patrick’s registers that are of possible interest. I have been able to capture images of all 106 entries and each associated page. The birth registrations include the names Smith, Redhead, or Gentle, and the registrations range from 1866 through 1928.

The image at the right is an example of a Register page from Item 1 of FHL1523480...

This is a page of the 1888 registration of one of the four daughters of my great-grandaunt Grace Eliza (nee SMITH) and great-granduncle, the Reverend George Augustus GENTLE who were married in the Parish of Saint George in 1873. The registration date is 27 November 1888 and the date of the birth is 12 October 1888. All-things-being-equal this registration is that of any one of my first cousins once removed: Nellie; Margaret Lilian Greaves; May; or Helen Myra Elaine.

From FHL1523479 I found three other Gentle Civil Birth Registrations: 1876 - a female; 1877 – a female; and 1886 – a male. And there's more work to do, but the 1888 entry could be that of one of the younger daughters.

Based on the complete description at the Family History Library the microfilm FHL1523480 has a total of 26 Items. The civil birth registrations are included in Items 1 through 19. Birth indexes are included in Items 20 through 24. Items 25 and 26 relate to death registrations. Hopefully I will be able to find another GENTLE registration that I may have missed, if she was born in the Parish of St. Patrick.

And I need to breakdown 106 SMITH, and GENTLE registrations and determine whether each entry belongs to one of our families and how it fits.

It’s getting warmer in Tampa…

Jim