Local parish registers held by Powys County Council Archives dating back to the 16th Century have been published online as part of a Wales-wide project.
The project which has taken around five years to finish has been done with the permission of the Church in Wales and includes records from 13 Welsh Archive Services.
In total around 893,000 images containing nine million baptisms, marriages and burials from across Wales have been digitised by FamilySearch International and will be searchable on the family history website findmypast.co.uk.
Access to all the online images and indexes for Wales will be free to search at Powys Archives and at all Powys Libraries.
Catherine Richards, Principal Officer for Museums and Archives said; “We are very excited to make our parish registers available online. Records of baptisms, marriages and burials are a major resource for family historians and can reveal fascinating and surprising secrets back through the generations.”
Some of the records for Powys date back to the 16th Century, making it possible to find Welsh ancestors as far back as the 1500s. The records contain entries in English and Latin. Often comments were added by the incumbents about illegitimacy, cause of death or other interesting facts.
In Kerry on 3 Jan 1819 Joseph Bridge was baptised. It records that he was “a foundling exposed by its unnatural and cruel mother to severe weather and found close to the Gilvach Bridge early in the morning.”
In the Llanfihangel Cwm Du register is written, “on 16 Sept 1809 John Andrews, died of a mortification in his privities in consequence of his having sat on a toad”.
