Who we are

We are a worldwide group of volunteers who endeavour to provide free information about a parish, its people and history, to assist family historians.  Each Kent OPC has a mandate to collect, collate and compile reference material for parishes throughout the county in the form of transcripts, extracts, abstracts, and indexes of original source records.

The founding of the OPC scheme

The original Online Parish Clerk project was that established for the county of Cornwall.  During 2000 three gentlemen residing in Cornwall - Michael McCormick, David Stick and Paul Brewer - envisioned and formulated the concept and structure of the Online Parish Clerk project.  In January, 2001 the men launched their vision with an announcement of the project to the Cornish mailing lists on Rootsweb.  This also marked the first request for volunteers to assist as assigned parish clerks.  The concept was generally well-received and list members from around the world signed on as volunteers to the Cornwall OPC project.  Since those early beginnings a number of OPC projects have been formulated:  Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire, Warwickshire, Lancashire, Sussex, Cumberland and Westmorland.  The Kent OPC project was initiated during 2004 by Adrian Furminger and taken over as of 24 December, 2006 by the current administrator, Susan D. Young.  It is believed that an OPC project is now in the works for London.

Regardless of county, all OPC projects share a core foundation:

Collect  -  obtain and collect as many records for a chose parish as is possible.

Preserve  -  historical and genealogical information found in the many records by way of transcription and storage of that information either online or in other electronic or digital formats.

Share  -  the gathered information with all personal and private researchers by making it freely available either online or by way of written lookup requests.  Readers and patrons visiting an OPC project are encouraged also to become involved by donating a little of their time to assist with the extraction of relevant data that can be published to a county project.

Flexibility  -  each OPC is the one who decides what data he or she wishes to collect for a parish, how it will be organized and distributed.

Respect  -  each OPC is required to consider possible copyright, data protection and privacy issues in the transcription and dissemination of the gathered information in their care and control.  Each OPC also must be alert to and discourage the misuse or commercial use of the information within their care and control.  All transcriptions are the copyright of the individual who produced them;  they are made available freely to private family researchers at the courtesy of the transcriber and we ask our readers and patrons to also respect the copyrights of our contributors.

How the Kent OPC operates

Our volunteers can choose to adopt a parish for which they are ultimately responsible for the routine collection and transcription of original record sources whether directly or through one or more assistants.  A volunteer who has adopted a parish is known by the title of Online Parish Clerk but our volunteer should in no manner be confused with an official Parish Clerk appointed by a County Council.  Some of our volunteers are unable to act in the capacity of an OPC and choose, instead, to simply provide transcriptions or other reference works from time-to-time.

All of the reference material made available under the umbrella of the Kent OPC project is free to use for personal and private purposes only.  None of the data that is available under the Kent OPC project umbrella may be reproduced for any commercial purposes.  Researchers are also reminded that all information provided by way of the Kent OPC project, regardless of the avenue of its delivery, is, at best, a secondary source and should be treated and regarded as such - as a means to developing a potential line of ancestry or enquiry only.  Original documents should always be checked before one incorporates information from a secondary source into their genealogical data.  No warranty is implied or given concerning the accuracy of the data delivered via the Kent OPC project.

Ideally, there should be an OPC for every parish in Kent.  Some OPCs may choose to service one or more parishes.  However, in practical terms, with over 400 parishes in the county, the Kent OPC project is far short of the number of volunteers needed to cover all of the parishes.  This situation does not necessarily mean that there is no information for a parish that has no OPC.  Quite often, we receive donations of transcribed records from casual contributors.  So, it may well be that a parish in which you are interested does have some information available to you.  At the very least, every posted parish page contains an historical description of the parish providing statistics of population, number of houses, churches in the parish and the names of any significant landholders, if available.  The parish page also includes links to outside sources of free information such as the 1881 census available on www.familysearch.org.  When a parish has an OPC, the parish page records the name and contact details of its OPC.  All posted parish pages can be accessed via our Parish List page.

Due to the organization of the Kent OPC, the reference works are made available to our readers and patrons via one or more avenues.  Some of the reference material is published on this Kent OPC web site.  Other materials have been posted to personal web sites of individual OPCs.  In either case, the data is accessed by way of links on the relevant parish page posted on this web site.

Alternatively, material may be made available by a parish OPC by way of a lookup service only.  This may be the case particularly if an OPC has a source that is in the form of a published work such as a book, newspaper report and/or magazine or journal article.  If a lookup in a particular work is available, a notation of the sources available for lookup is included on the relevant parish page under the section titled "A View of the Parish" directly following the name and contact information of the parish OPC.  If an OPC is providing a lookup service it has been left to the individual OPC to determine if an email-enquiry or postal-enquiry service works best for him or her.  Again, information concerning the services available from an OPC and his or her preferred method of enquiry is posted on the relevant parish page.  When contacting an OPC please allow two to three weeks for a reply.  If you haven't received a reply after three weeks please send an email to me at administrator@kent-opc.org.

We hope you find your travels through this project beneficial to your research.  If you feel you would also like to contribute to the efforts of this project, please send an email to me at the above address.  Also please visit our page for volunteers and for donations for further information.

Acknowledgements

Kent Online Parish Clerks very gratefully acknowledge transcription permissions given by the following record repositories, agencies and individuals for transcriptions, abstractions and indices.  All have granted their permission to use and display their works and have waived their individual and respective fees and royalties therefor.

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
• Centre for Kentish Studies
• Canterbury Cathedral Archives
• Medway County Coucil, CityArk

We would also like to thank each of the following people for participating in and helping the Kent Online Parish Clerk project by providing transcripts, abstracts, extracts, indices, photographs and other images.  All are either current OPCs, have served in the past as OPCs, or are casual contributors to this project.  All have granted their permission to use and display their works and have waived their individual and respective fees and royalties therefor.  Their contributions are appreciated by all.

• Adrian Furminger, past County Administrator, ongoing contributor
• Kris Ellis, OPC Nonington
• Derek Crompton, OPC Plumstead
• James Halsey, OPC Canterbury Christchurch and St. Peter
• David Auger, OPC Rainham
• Debra Buchanan, OPC Snodland
• John Newport, OPC Herne
• Dorothy Holden, transcriptions
• Sue Hammond, transcriptions and photographs
• Earl Chamberlain, Bexleyheath photographs
• Robin Christopher, Boxley, Bredgar and Stockbury church photographs

Without the co-operation and participation of every individual and organization the Kent OPC project would be much less interesting and rewarding.