Welcome to the new projects page which will be updated on a monthly basis. The society currently has four primary Projects which will be extremely beneficial to its members and the Society. Please read below for further information.
Newspaper Project
The society has purchased a yearly subscription for the British Newspaper Archive in order to download every article which mentions “Cheslyn Hay”. These articles are currently being downloaded by volunteers and given an index number. A searchable database is being developed at our research room to quickly find names or address once the articles have been catalogued.
We are hoping to have the Index database up and running for the AGM with a limited amount of searchable catalogued article Index’s uploaded to demonstrate to members the projects potential. We aim to have the full Index completed for this year’s annual exhibition.
There will be a small charge to access this resource which will be finalised closer to the projects completion.
Archives Index Project
The Society has been established since 1994 and since that date it has been collecting historical documents and artefacts in the form of donations or research completed by volunteers. It was realised sometime ago that the potential of these documents were not being fully exploited due to the lack of an updated searchable index.
Approximately six months ago one of our Archivists, Joanne Barber, headed the project to fully categorise the archives and set up a workable index. This first stage has now been completed and stage two is on the way.
Stage two consists of expanding the catalogue index to include names and address’s which will be entered onto a searchable database. When completed members will be able to search the entire archives for a name or address connected with Cheslyn Hay and a print out provided showing what documents contain their search criteria and where they are stored.
There will be no charge for the use of this index at the History Society’s research room for members.
Family Tree Project
Last year we asked members to send in their Cheslyn Hay related family trees to increase our archive collection. Where possible we encouraged members to send in digital trees in a GEDCOM format as these can be early searched for individuals. Any hand written
trees were transcribed onto GEDCOM files by our Family Tree Archivist Gemma Gardiner, and to date we are just short of 100 trees. As with the Archives and Newspaper projects a Name index has been set up to speed up searches. This Index will be available for members visiting our research room.
This index will quickly establish which family trees contain the particular ancestor a member is researching; these trees can then be printed off for a small charge.
Cheslyn Hay Cemetery Plans
The surviving Cemetery plans for Cheslyn Hay were originally made in 1900 when the Cemetery first opened. These plans have never been modernized and can be very hard to read due to fading and poor handwriting. The majority of enquires we have ultimately end with “do you know where they are buried”, therefore it was decided that we should create modern plans for the Cemetery.
The Cemetery is divided into eight sections each section will be displayed on an A1 poster and each grave will be colour coded to signify if the occupant is a Child, Adult, Double plot etc. The plots in addition to the occupants name will also display the burial register number to enable quick reference with the original registers.
We are hoping to have these plans ready for this year’s annual exhibition on Saturday 29thSeptember 2012. If you have ancestors who lived and died in Cheslyn Hay and you aren’t sure where their final resting place is then please come along to view the plans.
If these plans prove to be popular then we may extend the project and create additional plans for Great Wyrley Cemetery where many Cheslyn Hay residents have been buried due to its location in Cheslyn Hay off Station Street.