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Information about the source abbreviations used in this website

ERO: Essex Record Office, Colchester, Essex, England. Since Henry Fuller’s family hailed from Stratford in West Ham parish, Essex, this is a common source cited on this website.

FHL: Family History Library. The Mormon church, or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based at Salt Lake City in the U.S. state of Utah, is dedicated to genealogy as part of its faith, and maintains the best and largest genealogical repository in the world. Through its 3,700 family history libraries in 88 countries around the world, the church makes it possible for anyone – not just church members -- to examine archival records on microfilm, microfiche or CD. When you see a reference such as “FHL film no. 1281537,” this is the reference number for the relevant Family History Library record. For more information go to http://www.familysearch.org/ and click on the “Library” tab.   

IGI: International Genealogical Index. This is a data base maintained by the LDS (see FHL above) consisting of submissions by church members and others of baptisms, marriages, burials etc. Although it’s a very valuable tool containing about 750 million entries, it should be born in mind that there is no requirement that anyone validate or document the information they are adding to the index. Material found on the IGI should be checked with the original source before you add it to your family tree. To search the IGI, go to http://www.familysearch.org/ and click on the “Search” tab.

MOOC: This stands for Master of the Orphan Chamber and is the archaic name for the archives of the Master of the Supreme Court in Cape Town. It is of one of the most valuable resources for genealogists studying South African ancestors in the Cape because it contains a collection of death notices going back deep into the 19^th century, each of which usually lists a fair amount of detail about the deceased, including their parents’ and children’s names. It also houses wills and estate papers. For information about how to get death notices, see Delia Robertson’s guide at http://www.geocities.com/~deliarobertson/.

NAAIRS: The National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System. An online database collection of indexes for a great many historical South African records. You won't find the records themselves in here, but you will find their index listings, and it's often possible to dig up genealogial clues on this website. For example, when a person's estate papers are listed, the predeceased or surviving spouse is often also listed in the index entry, sometimes including the woman's maiden name, which makes NAAIRS a valuable tool for finding marriages. The website is at http://www.national.archives.gov.za/naairs.htm.

Note that the source verifying an individual’s existence will sometimes be found in the notes for one of the parents or grandparents.