Where do you come from?

BMDBMD

Parish Records

CENSUSES

CIVIL BMDRECORDS

About 1840

PARISHRECORDS

GENES REUNITED

GENUKI , FHS, GOONS, ETC

GOOGLE, ROOTSWEB and OTHER LISTS

Ancestry.co.ukLDS 1881

Findmypast.com

FreeBMDAncestry

Findmypast.comLocal BMD

sites

LDS Microfiche

LDS IGI / BVRI

Parish Records

Parish registers are one of the main sources used by family historians researching families in England and Wales.

Parish registers are simply records of baptisms, marriages and burials as recorded by the minister [rector, vicar or curate] in charge of the Church of England parish.

Parish Records

Baptismal registers, which in most cases were the only record of a child's birth before civil registration began in July 1837, are especially useful as they record the names of the child’s parents.  

Marriage registers from 1754 onwards give the signatures of witnesses, who may be relatives of the married couple. From 1837, marriage registers also give the names and occupations of the fathers of the bride and groom.  The family connections which can be made from such evidence make parish registers especially useful.

Parish Records

• Parish registers were started in England in 1538

• Many churches, however, did not begin keeping records until a further notice was sent out in 1558, and even then, many did not comply

• Most of the parish registers are now stored in a County Record Office, although a few are still in the individual churches.

Bishops Transcripts

• These are contemporary copies of the Parish Registers - that is, copies made in the parish in the same year as the original parish register entries

• They may not be an exact copy of a register entry

• They are useful where a parish register is missing, or where there are gaps or difficulties in reading existing ones

Baptisms Marriages Burials

1538 basic information basic information basic information

1754 witnesses & signaturesadded

1813 father's occupationand abode added

abode & age addedsometimes occupation

1837age & abode added

father's name & occupationadded

Development of Parish Records

Early Combined Register

Baptism Register before 1813

Marriage Register before 1754

Marriage Registers 1754 to 1837

Marriage registers after 1837

Burial registers before 1813

Burial registers after 1813

• Many parish registers have been transcribed and published by parish register societies, local history, and family history societies. The International Genealogical Index (IGI) compiled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints includes birth, baptism and marriage entries extracted from many parish registers and are a useful tool to find entries and establish where families were living. The British Isles Vital Records Index (BVRI) consists of entries taken from parish and vital records and is also a useful tool for researchers; both can be accessed on the Mormon family history website www.familysearch.org.

• The National Burial Index is an on-going project to index burials. Copies are available in The National Archives and on CD-ROM in many libraries and from the Federation of Family History Societies. Its coverage is far from complete but is increasing. At present coverage is better for the Northeast, the Midlands and East Anglia, but other areas are included.

IGI

The International Genealogical Index (IGI) is an index of BMD events created by the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS). The index is available for viewing at all LDS Family History Centres, on microfiche or CD ROM, and also available for searching on the Internet on the LDS website.

IGI

• The IGI with 80 million entries is certainly the most comprehensive available index of English parish baptisms and marriages available. (Burials are not in the index, except for a few isolated examples).

• The IGI does not cover every one of the 12000 parishes in England.

• For those parishes which it does cover, there may be whole periods missing.

IGI

• For those which it does cover, there may be omissions of individual records even in the covered periods.

• Some entries in the IGI are from the Bishop's Transcripts and not the original registers, and the BTs themselves are prone to errors and omissions. (Having said that, even the original registers may have entries missing which are in the BTs and vice versa).

IGI

• You may find more than one entry in the index for the same event with conflicting information.

• Bear in mind that the IGI is primarily an index of ordinances carried out by LDS members as part of their religion, rather than an index of parish registers

IGI

Some entries in the IGI are from submissions by individual LDS members rather than from parish registers, and many of these are very prone to errors. Be very wary of entries which have an "@" symbol beside them or which state a birth date (rather than a baptism date), or which state a date as being "about".

IGI

• The golden rule with the IGI is to treat it for what it is. An index. If you find an entry in the IGI, always look at the films/fiche of the original parish registers.

• Used in this way, it is a great tool to help you with your research.

The Vital Records Index - British Isles

• The Vital Records Index contains approx 12.3 million birth, christening, and marriage records, with varying degrees of coverage from within each county

• It contains no death records

• Generally speaking, it contains records which are “not” in the IGI, and therefore it is an invaluable supplement to the IGI

Not Anglican?

• http://www.exploregenealogy.co.uk/NonAnglicanSources.html

According to the 1851 census, about 25% of the population didn't consider themselves to be Anglicans. Many of those were classed as Nonconformist, an umbrella term taking in Methodists, Quakers and other denominations. That means there's a fair chance that at least one of your ancestors didn't belong to the Church of England. Because of that, they generally didn't appear in Anglican parish registers, which can seem like a dead end in genealogy.

Not Anglican?

• www.BMDregisters.co.uk

Methodists, Wesleyans, Baptists, Independents, Protestant Dissenters, Congregationalist, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Quakers (Society of Friends), Dissenters and Russian Orthodox. Maternity Records plus various other BMD records.

Roman Catholic

• http://www.catholic-history.org.uk/cfhs/

• http://www.catholic-library.org.uk/

• http://catholic-genealogy.co.uk/cg/index.htm

• Tracing Your Catholic Ancestry in England

By Michael Gandy. 16 pages. ISBN 1-86006-084-6.

Jewish Records

• www.jewishgen.org

• http://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/

• www.bod.org.uk

• http://www.jgsgb.org.uk/

• http://www.jeffreymaynard.com/

• http://www.jhse.org/