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 they launched their vision with the announcement of the project to the Cornish mailing lists on Rootsweb.  This also marked the first request for volunteers to assist as assigned online 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 including Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire, Warwickshire, Lancashire, Sussex, Cumberland, Kent and Westmorland. All OPC projects share common principles:

To obtain and collect as many records for a chosen parish as possible.

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.

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 so that it can be published to a county project.

Each OPC decides what data he or she wishes to collect for a parish, how it will be organized and distributed.

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.