1,742 burials at Witton Gilbert in Chester-le-Street district, covering 1852 – 4 August 1900. Residences mentioned include Bear Park, Beech Grove, Charlaw, Durham City, Edmondsley, Findon Hill, Framwellgate, Kimblesworth, Langley Park, Nettlesworth, Plawsworth, Red House (Lanchester), Red Row, Sacriston, Waldridge Fell, White House Colliery, and Witton Gilbert. Some samples:

• 21 Apr 1852 Edward Ramsay Thompson, of Edmondsley, age: 6 months
• 25 Nov 1877 Catherine Rutter, of Charlaw Pit, age: 22
• 6 Oct 1899 John Marley, of Witton Gilbert, age: 88

1,179 baptisms at South Hylton St. Mary from the opening of this chapelry in March 1821 to the end of 1847. South Hylton was created as a chapelry in the parish of Bishopwearmouth St. Michael & All Angels in March 1821 and became its own parish in 1854.  It served the residents of Claxheugh, Grindon, High Barnes, Hylton, Monkwearmouth, North Hylton, Offerton Haugh, South Hylton, Southwick, and Sunderland. A ford and ferry crossing of the Wear since at least the 1400s, the village of South Hylton was previously known as Ford, Low Ford, and Hylton Ferry, and it was home to many industries, including a paper mill, several potteries, sawmills, shipyards, forges, and foundries.

Wonderfully, some mother’s maiden surnames are shown in 1829, all mother’s maiden surnames are shown in 1832, and nearly all mother’s maiden surnames are shown from 1835 to 1847. South Hylton is not indexed by the IGI so should provide some useful discoveries for those researching Sunderland-area ancestry. Some examples:

• 4 Mar 1821 Joseph William Ryles, of Hylton, born 24-Feb 1821, son of Aaron Ryles (potter) & Margaret
• 7 Jun 1830 Charles Henry Masterman, of South Hylton, son of John Masterman (sailmaker) & Mary
• 30 Dec 1832 Benjamin Wilde, of South Hylton, born 8-Oct 1832, son of John Wilde (potter) & Anne Outersides
• 6 Feb 1839 Thomas Miller, of Grindon Mill, born 4-Jan 1839, son of William Miller (miller) & Elizabeth Grace Ross
• 19 Feb 1843 John George Chambers, of South Hylton, born 30-Jan 1843, son of George Chambers (foreman at Mr. Dawson’s Pottery) & Elizabeth Maddison
• 22 Aug 1847 John Charlton Head, of Paper Mill, born 9-Mar 1847, son of John Head (papermaker) & Elizabeth Ann Carr

A  few people have expressed concern about their passwords being transmitted by email, which could possibly be read by somebody else on their computer or intercepted along the way. You can now opt-out of having your password transmitted by email. There is a new setting in the My Account panel, and also when you create an account, to control whether or not your password is emailed to you when it is created or changed. You can still click the Forgotten Password link to request that your password be emailed to you.

We have also had complaints in the past that we don’t offer enough long-enough passwords, and we recently discovered that although we had allowed users to create passwords of up to 10 characters, our system was actually only storing (and comparing) the first 8 characters. We have increased the length of the password to a maximum of 15 characters and fixed the length-discrepancy bug.  If you try to log in using a password that is 9 or 10 characters, and the first 8 characters match what we have on file, you will get a message offering to update your password to what you just typed. If you choose Yes, your password will be updated (and, optionally, emailed to you). If you answer No, you will be logged in with your 8-character password, but if you try to log in later with the longer password, you will see the same message again. To get rid of the message, either change your password to the 8-character version in your My Account panel, or answer Yes and let the system update your password to the longer version, or change it to the longer version yourself after you are logged in.

Please email us if you have any trouble logging in or changing your username or password – it’s entirely possible that something might have been broken by all these code changes.

852 burials at Sunderland Holy Trinity for the year 1855 and January 1856. These are more detailed than the average post-1812 burial, generally naming parents, spouses, occupations, and interesting causes of death. Being a port town, there were lots of mariners and drownings, and there was a cholera outbreak in September 1855 that killed at least 66 people. Some samples:

• 14 Jan 1856 William Whiteman, age: 19, mariner, native of Winchelsea, found drowned in the River
• 9 Feb 1855 Alfred Edward Gill, of John Street, age: 1, died 7 Feb 1855, son of John Gill (officer of Customs)
• 23 May 1855 Elizabeth Craig, of High Street, age: 75, died 20 May 1855, widow of Thomas Craig (master mariner)
• 12 Sep 1855 Eleanor Heslop, of High Street, age: 45, died 11 Sep 1855, wife of John Dodgson Heslop (publican), cholera
• 15 Sep 1855 Isabella Heslop, of High Street, age: 17, died 1(?) Sep 1855, daughter of John Dodgson Heslop (publican), cholera
  [Note: the entry does give a date of death of Sep 1st, but it is surely a clerical error as cholera victims were generally buried within 24 hours of death.]

Residences listed include Bishopwearmouth, the Barracks, Hendon, and Monkwearmouth. Nearly all name the street of abode and nearly a third of them list house numbers.

Filling in our gaps at Jarrow St. Paul, here are 852 baptisms for 1836-1842 and 1847, from the parish register. We now have a continuous run of baptisms at Jarrow from 1813 to the end of 1852. Residences mentioned include, besides Jarrow (East Jarrow, Jarrow Colliery, and Jarrow Row), Hebburn, Curliew, Felling, Hebburn Colliery & Quay, Hedworth, Monkton, Newcastle and Wallsend (across the river), Simonside, and South Shields.

Some samples:

• 3 Jan 1836 Isabella Spoors, of Jarrow Colliery, daughter of Richard Spoors (waggonman) & Sarah
• 22 Apr 1838 Stephen Sibbit, of Jarrow, son of Stephen Sibbit (mason) & Isabella
• 18 Dec 1842 Elizabeth Salkeld, of Jarrow, daughter of John Salkeld (hairdresser) & Hannah

Because it is fairly common for people to mis-type their password when trying to log in, we have made some changes to the login process. Now, if you type your password incorrectly, our system will send you an email containing both your correct password AND the password you tried to enter, so you can see where you got it wrong. So, if you can’t log in and our system says you typed your password incorrectly, please check your email. To keep your life simpler, we recommend saving all of your usernames and passwords in your browser (if your browser offers that feature), or installing RoboForm, which remembers all the usernames and passwords for all the sites you use. RoboForm can even fill in your address and credit card information when you’re ordering stuff online. (No, we are not affiliated with RoboForm; just a satisfied customer.) Please let us know if you like the new login process, or if you hate it or have any problems with it.

2,407 burials at Cornforth Holy Trinity from the opening of the graveyard to the second week of 1902. Cornforth parish was carved out of Bishop Middleham and Kelloe in 1865. Residences mentioned include Brandon Hill, Cornforth (and Cornforth Lane, Mill, and Moor), Cow Close, Coxhoe, East Howle, Featherstone’s Houses, Ferryhill, Hett, Metal Bridge, Old Cornforth, Peat Edge, Spennymoor, Standalone, Stobb Cross, Stockton, Thinford, Thrislington, Trimdon, Tursdale, Tursdale Colliery, and West Cornforth. We have filed Cornforth in Stockton district, but in 1896 it became part of the new Sedgefield district.

Samples:

• 10 Nov 1868 James Strange, of West Cornforth, age: 14 weeks
• 3 Dec 1874 Mary Smith, of Cornforth, age: 39, neglected by her drunken husband
• 8 Nov 1887 Ralph Harrison, of Old Cornforth, age: 92
• 22 Dec 1901 Fred Gibson Gowland, of Cornforth Mill, age: 20

171 baptisms at Sadberge St. Andrew, from the Bishop’s Transcript, covering 1798-1812. Some samples:

•  24 Feb 1799 Margaret Chipchase, born 22 Feb, 1st daughter of John Chipchase (native of Longnewton) by his wife Mary Elder (native of Elwick, County Durham)
• 20 Dec 1812 James Peacock, born 18 Dec, 1st son of John Peacock (native of Whorlton, Yorkshire) by his wife Hannah Harker (native of the same parish)

Similar to our recent problem with Easington baptisms, we discovered a problem with Monk Hesleden St Mary baptisms from 1798-1812, in which the father’s nativity and occupation had been accidentally omitted during our data upload process. These have now been added back in (the additions were mostly occupations, as father’s nativity was not listed in most of these baptisms). We also found one baptism that had been missed, and made corrections to several others. We have tried to notify all customers who bought these records. We also added father’s occupations to all the Monk Hesleden St Mary baptisms 1813-1836. If you purchased a baptism at Monk Hesleden St Mary between 1798 and 1836 inclusive, you should log in and check My Previous Orders to see if any fatherly details have been added to your record.

For example:

• 28 Mar 1812 Ann Trotter, of Sheraton, born 25 Mar 1812, daughter of Thomas Trotter (farmer, native of St. Andrew’s Auckland) & Ann nee Maughan (native of Eldon, parish of St. Andrew’s Auckland)
• 8 Jul 1827 Henry Robinson Tattersall, of High Hesleden, born 08 Aug 1821, son of William Tattersall (belonging to the Preventive Water Guard) & Sarah