New life for old church records ……..Ashley DMello | TNN
Mumbai: Catholics from Bandra to Borivali can look forward to tracing their lineage back several hundred years with crumbling church records receiving a fresh lease thanks to a conservation project at St Andrews Church in Bandra, one of the oldest in the suburbs.
The project will not only preserve the family histories of the community for the coming generations but also contribute to understanding suburban life over the past few hundred years.
St Andrews Church was established in 1580 and served a wide population from Bandra right up to Juhu for several hundred years. Some of its parishoners later migrated to Borivali and Vasai to avoid the plagues which killed many people in the 19th century but continued to come to the church for baptisms, marriages and burials, said Major Leon Fonseca, who first pushed for the project.
The oldest existing church register dating back to 1750 has been restored and the project is gathering steam. In a small room in the church complex, the painstaking work of restoration is being undertaken by experts from Intach who were brought in from its Orissa Art Conservation Centre. The project is expected to last over six months and cost Rs 7 lakh.
Fonseca, a history buff, pointed out that the root of the oldest register is from the Church of Santa Anna, the earliest church in Bandra which stood on grounds which are now the BEST bus depot near the station. The church was blown up by the British army as a defensive measure to prevent it from being used as a staging point for an attack by the Maratha army in 1739. Some of its registers and artifacts were taken to the other churches in Bandra, he said.
The Church of Santa Anna was destroyed but its register is preserved and will yield useful information to any researcher who is curious enough to open its pages for a read, said Fonseca.
Orissa conservationists help out
Mumbai: First on the list of the conservation project at St Andrews Church, Bandra, are the birth registers. In all, there are 91 registers of births, marriages and burials along with old grave records to be preserved, said Major Leon Fonseca, one of the prime movers of the project.
Father Vernon Aguiar, parish priest of St Andrews, said he intends continuing with the work of preservation of the records.They are part of church history and have to be kept for posterity, he said proudly.
There was an urgent need to start conservation as the registers were crumbling and many of them were missing. The records of all our families are here, so there is also an emotional need, Fonseca added, pointing to the rapidly changing skyline which was slowly eroding the old world charm of Bandra. This conservation project stands in sharp contrast to what has happened at some of the old Catholic churches which have seen the destruction of their old artifacts including some antique altars.
Fonseca said, The project will illuminate city history and will give the local Catholic community some pride in their past. If you look at the register for deaths, any researcher will be able to tell you that the plague killed off many people in 1884 and thats when the many plague crosses came up in Bandra.
Fonseca added: The project for the registers and other records will cost Rs 7 lakhs. We intend taking up workshops and programmes for creating an awareness about heritage and are looking at trusts and individuals to help in cash or kind.
Santosh Kumar Swain, Biswal Sahoo and Nandgir Goswami, the three restorers who have been trained by Intach, have been busy for the last month preserving the old folios some of which are crumbling. After we have done the job, it is necessary to preserve these precious records, said Swain, who is a junior antique restorer with the Orissa state museum.
Conservationists work on a tattered page from a 250-yr-old birth register
REVISITING HISTORY: St Andrews Church in Bandra seeks to preserve the registers and records, which date back to a hundred years