Caldecote Parish Registers and other Records from CFHS

Cambridgeshire Family History Society (CFHS) have many transcriptions of parish registers and other records, so I need to make a list of the ones I want for Caldecote.  Some of those will include other areas I am interested in, e.g. Bourn, Toft and Kingston - and some other records transcriptions will cover even wider areas, e.g. the Petty Sessions.

But, it's a good idea to make a list of what's available, so I know what I need to buy!  It's that dreadful time when you do need to put your hand in your pocket and get the full set of records in your hand, saving you weeks/months of poncing about online trying to do it all for free.

So, here's my CFHS Wishlist:

• Caldecote Parish Registers 1599-1950.  £12 as a CD/download.  Reference number  CD/PR/042. 
  
  
  This also includes the Bourn Parish Registers for 1559-1950.  These will give me the years covered by FreeREG and a further 120 or so years!  It seems to be the most comprehensive transcriptions of parish records available for Caldecote - as the CD includes Bourn and everybody seemed to float between the two villages.  The transcriptions from Caldecote Parish Registers can be viewed, for free, at a Family Research Centre of the LDS, but even the travel to my "local" Centre would cost £5 in fuel. A CD in my own hand gives me 24/7 access on a whim :)  Bargain.  Who'd not want a copy of this??
  
  When you look closer though, the CD doesn't contain all entries from all dates.  Caldecote Marriages are for 1604-1949; Caldecote Banns transcriptions cover 1760-1950; Caldecote Baptisms are transcribed for 1640-1950 and Caldecote Burial transcriptions cover 1640-1950.  So I am unsure where they got the 1599 description from - maybe they found a few sheets, or transcribed a bit more, but didn't update the image as that was harder to do :)
• Cambridgeshire  Monumental Inscriptions for places A-I.  £12 as a CD/download.  Reference number CD/MI/002.  This CD covers Caldecote, as well as many other places.  It's part of a trilogy of CDs and I do intend to get the full set covering Cambridgeshire in time.

Personally, I find the descriptions of what you actually get a little lacking. I don't want to pin all my hopes on something being magnificent, that turns out to be not very useful at all.  That's the sole reason I've not bought them to date, to be honest :)

As I can't view the contents without buying, I'll just have to bite the bullet at some point.  Just these two genealogy CDs would give me all the records available - and (potentially) all the headstones in the graveyards (potentially?), it'd mean I'd have a full set of everything from the parishes of Caldecote and Bourn in one go, for just £24.  And then I could move on - it's surprising just how many parishes you do ultimately feel the need to get the records for.  It's best not to leap in really and consider carefully how far you're prepared to look for where ancestors disappeared to or from!

To compare the CFHS CD with FreeREG, FreeREG says it covers Caldecote from 1604 to 1988, so it looks like the CD will be almost the same data, except banns won't be on FreeREG (maybe).

I've spent months wasting time on the free sites only feeling I've got "so far" into the available data and nailing this once and for all is worth the small cost, although, in this case, FreeREG does seem to compare very well.  The two datasets are from different transcribers.  FreeREG will have been transcribed from the originals via the LDS; CFHS were members transcribing from the originals many years ago.  So both sources were transcribed from the originals, but different people, so there might be just a tiny difference that fills a gap!  (For comparison of Bourn, FreeREG covers 7162 records from 1563 to 1876).  Of course, FreeREG doesn't cover banns (to my knowledge).

I'm off to serve dinner now .... gotta keep the strength up for the next set of mysteries and curiosities I uncover!

Image: CFHS Shop