Replaced the index to burials at Whickham St. Mary for 1700-1719 with full details, so those 1,784 burials are now instantly available, including 2 we missed the first time around.  Some samples of burials:

• 2 Apr 1700 Christobell Barras, of Whickham, daughter of John Barras
• 24 Mar 1702 Sir James Clavering, of Axwell, died 18 Mar, Baronet, gave fifty shillings to the poor for being buried in linen
• 20 Nov 1710 Patience Briggs, daughter of Lancelot Briggs
• 31 Aug 1715 Jane Newby, of Fellside, wife of Robert Newby
• 26 Sep 1719 Ralph Parnell, servant at Gibside

5,224 marriage bonds issued by the Durham Diocese for 1806-1815.  The Diocese of Durham covered all of County Durham and parts of Northumberland and North Yorkshire.

Marriage bonds often provide ages, occupations, and place of residence for the bride and groom during a period when marriage registers did not provide that information. Please read the Marriages Bonds section of the Transcription Samples page for a description of what information is found in bonds, allegations, and associated documents, and how we present that information. For example:

25 Jan 1765 Thomas Lorraine (joiner, widower), age 52, of St.John, Newcastle-upon-Tyne obtained a licence to marry Margaret Brown (widow), age 50, of St.John
Surety: Peter Buteyman, butcher, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
[Note: married 26 Jan at St.John]

14 Aug 1799 Edward Swinney (keelman, widower), age 21, of Cox Green, Penshaw obtained a licence to marry Thomasin Mushens, age 21, of Bishopwearmouth
Surety: Robert Mushens, keelman, of Cox Green
[Note: married 15 Aug at Bishopwearmouth]

Marriage bonds were not issued on a per-district basis, so the District filter is ignored when the marriage bond database is searched.

These records are from Ron Nubley’s Index, which we are in the process of integrating into our collection, so when you buy one of these, you will immediately get the brief index entry, and the full entry will be transcribed and emailed to you within 3 days, at which point it becomes part of our database and you can view it again at any time.

Added 5, 756 more names to the 1851 census of South Shields, completing South Shields township (but not the entire district).

I’ve made some user-requested changes to how the site works. After you search, you will now see 3 buttons at the top:

• New Search – opens the search form with the fields cleared
• Edit Search – opens the search form with the fields filled in with your last search parameters
• Last Results – opens the search results list (this used to be called Last Search but that could be confused with ‘perform the last search over again’ or ‘edit my last search’ so I changed it)

The Edit Search button should solve the problem of doing a search and wanting to tweak just one thing but finding that the form had cleared all the fields when you returned to it.

In general, using the Back button on your browser will NOT retain the search parameters and is likely to post an annoying message about how the page has expired and you have to refresh it. I have been unable to find code that fixes this, so the solution is to use the New Search and Edit Search buttons instead of the browser’s Back button.

I also added code that should keep you logged in for 24 hours or until you close your browser, whichever comes first, so you won’t return from checking other sites to find your results or your search parameters have disappeared. It seems to be working for me, but I expect it will not work for everybody, depending on which browser you are using. If you find yourself still being logged out after 25 minutes or so, please email me about it.

I removed the ‘Clear Fields’ button on the search form. New Search does the same thing.

Please let me know if I broke anything with these changes.

Replaced the index to burials at Whickham St. Mary for 1576-1699 with full details, so those 8,460 burials are now instantly available, including 12 we missed the first time around.  There were epidemics of bubonic plague in 1610, 1626,  1645, 1646, and 1648, corresponding to similar epidemics in other parts of the country. Some samples of burials:

• 3 Jun 1576 Agnes Matphen
• 1610 [blank] Day, died of the plague, child of Lionell Day
  [Note: date between 12 Aug - 3 Sep]
• 15 Sep 1610 Isabell Nattresse, died on the Fell of the plague
• 22 Jan 1645 Margery Bedlington, died of the plague, wife of Raphe [Ralph] Bedlington
• 4 Jul 1649 [blank] [blank], servant to William Wallas, killed in Stoddard Hill pit in the Leigh where William Wallas was overman
• 12 Aug 1678 Jane Golightly, buried in woollen, wife of John Golightly
• 27 Apr 1690 George Middleton, illegitimate son of Edmond Middleton
• 31 Aug 1699 Isabell Smallshanks