The effort is still "in progress" but Steven has already extracted thousands of marriages. He has placed the extractions on the web site http://www.sgibbs1.freeserve.co.uk/ParishRegistersPage.htm. Best of all, the information is available free of charge.
The web page is a bit plain looking but is very easy to use. The lists are in date order by parish. There is no index or search capabilities on the web pages but Google solves that problem easily. If you don't know the parish where your ancestors were married but do believe they were married in Bedfordshire, go to www.Google.com and enter:
site:http://www.sgibbs1.freeserve.co.uk xxxxxxxxSubstitute the name you are looking for in place of xxxxxxxx. Within a second or two, Google will return a list of pages in Steven Gibbs' records that contain the name xxxxxxxx somewhere on the page. You then need to click on each page's link to find the entries of interest, one page at a time.
You can probably find the word by scanning the entries by eye. However, for a long page with hundreds of listings, you may find it easier to use your web browser's search capabilities to search the one page that is presently displayed. Press Control-F (Macintosh users press Command-F) and enter the name you seek. Your web browser then will find the first occurrence of xxxxxxxx on the page. Press Control-F (Macintosh users press Command-F) again to find the second occurrence and then repeat as necessary to find all occurrences of xxxxxxxx on the page. You can also use the same method to look for surnames, parishes, and occupations. Simply enter the word you seek in place of xxxxxxxx. The same process should work on other web sites as well.
Steven Gibbs is to be commended for his efforts. We need more people like Steven!
My thanks to newsletter reader Charlotte Easter for telling me about this great resource.
