The Metcalfe Society - The Computer Index

The Computer Index was begun as a card index in 1980 by our first President, Helen Offer, and eventually held over 20,000 cards. This became too unwieldy and difficult to transport so the decision was taken in 1989 to "computerise". We used, and still do, IBM PC's and IBM Filing Assistant to hold details of over 80,000 individuals which are taken from family trees, parish registers, census returns etc.

Individual entries, which may have multiple sources, contain all known facts such as Christian names, birth/baptism/marriage and death details etc.

In August 2009 the mammoth task of converting the information in over 102,000 individual records was completed and uploaded to our website, making the entire database searchable online by our members.

This joins the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Wills databases to offer our members another valuable online resource for researching their family history.

Click here to view information on how to join the Society.

POSTAL ENQUIRIES

Send your enquires to the Archivist.

Send all known details about the person in question. For example, it may be as much as "John Metcalfe who married Jane Jones at Aysgarth on 2nd March 1838 at age 26 and gave his father's name as William Thomas Metcalfe, sheep doctor"; OR, it may be as little as "John Metcalfe buried at Aysgarth in 1854 aged 42". In any case a search will be made to see if the "Mecca Index" holds anything further.

Members who do not have internet access are allowed at least two searches free of charge per annum in return for SAE/IRCs - we reserve the right to charge 10p per page for printouts if the situation warrants it. Would you please send stamps rather than a stamped addressed envelope to enable the archivist to use whichever envelope size is appropriate for her reply.

Non-members will be asked to pay £20 per search and 50p per page.

Please also note that due to the number of enquiries The Society receives you may have to wait some time for the search to be completed and we ask for your patience in this matter.