Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

by Jonathan Oates

  The Round church, Cambridge, 1900s. Paul Lang’s collection.

  Parishes have their origin in the late Saxon and the Norman centuries and most had been formed by 1200, as secular magnates founded churches to serve their estates. They vary enormously in both acreage and in population. They could be geographically small, but densely populated city parishes, as in London or York, or large but sparsely populated and rural. Some large parishes were subdivided into townships, as in the case of Halifax in Yorkshire or Great Budworth in Cheshire. The parish church and minister would be central to both, however, and this often applied in a geographical as well as in an administrative and ecclesiastical sense. The parish was also expected to sustain its minister.

  Parishes created a great many records over the centuries, some of which have survived, especially since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Medieval records do exist, but are regrettably rare, though to be fair, far fewer were created (no parish registers, no poor law). Most of those for our period are now deposited in the appropriate county record office. The best introduction to parish records is W E Tate, The Parish Chest (3rd edn, 1969), which gives lots of examples of the types of parish records which exist. A useful book for ascertaining ancient parishes and their boundaries is the Phillimore Index to Parish Registers and www.genuki.org

  Parish Registers

  When genealogists refer to parish records, very often what are meant, to the exclusion of all else, are parish registers, and whilst these are not the only fruit of parochial administration, they are perhaps the single most important one. This is because they record almost everybody who was born, died and was married (even at times, Catholics, Nonconformists and Jews, especially where burials are concerned, because churchyards were the only place for the latter to take place). There is nothing which does likewise prior to parish registers. Researchers owe much to Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister in the 1530s. It was in 1538 that an Act was passed to instruct parishes to maintain and preserve parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials. This was to prevent disputes about inheritance and to ascertain who was related to whom, and was part of the wider revolution in government initiated by the said Cromwell at this time.

  Initially these registers were simply parchment books of blank pages (or loose sheets) in which all three forms of service were recorded. Entries are recorded as they occur, in date order, but divided into the three forms of service. In the case of baptisms, the baby’s Christian name will appear first, then their parents’ Christian name and surname. In the event of the few illegitimate births (about 1–3% of the total), the father’s name often did not appear, and the term ‘base born’ will be used to signal disapproval. An amusing entry from the registers of St Mary’s Hanwell is as follows, ‘Thomas, son (daughter) of Thomas Messenger and Elizabeth his wife, was born and baptised October 24 1731, by the midwife, at the font, called a boy, and named by his godfather, Thomas, but proved a girl’, but a more conventional one from the same register is that of 12 April 1789 of ‘James Hughes, son of James and Hannah’. Baptisms, are of course not the same as births, but they usually occurred a few days, or at most a few weeks, after birth (infant mortality being very high); sometimes clergy recorded birth dates as well as baptism dates.

  Thomas Cromwell, originator of parish registers.

  Paul Lang’s collection.

  For marriages, the two parties will be named. At the parish of Sunbury on 15 April 1800 was recorded the marriage of John Banks and Jane Reynolds. It would usually be noted if one was from outside the parish. Thus, for the same parish on 12 May 1800, ‘James Edwards of Reynoldstone, co. Glamorgan, and Sarah Lacy, lic[ence].’ Occasionally occupation might be recorded as in the instance of John Saunders, carpenter, of Chertsey and Mary Watts, on 25 March 1722 at Sunbury. Most marrying are assumed to be bachelor and spinster, otherwise it will be noted as in this example, ‘Benjamin Nurton, w[idower] and Martha Jackson, w[idow], both of St Saviour’s, Southwark, lic[ence]’. For burials, simply the name of the deceased is recorded. A Hanwell example of 6 January 1788 simply notes ‘Brown, James’. Sometimes there may be additional information, perhaps naming the husband of the deceased, or the parents if the death was of a child. An example of flesh being added to the skeleton was when John Slack of New Hutton was buried at Kendal on 16 December 1745 and it was noted that he had been ‘kill’d by ye Scots’, this being an incident on the retreat of the Jacobite rebels back to Scotland. Early registers have Christian names written in Latin.

  Very few parishes have a complete set of registers dating back to 1538. Many of the earliest ones do not survive, written as they may have been on loose sheets of paper and poorly stored. Some clergy may have ignored the initial instructions from London. Religious upheaval caused by the radical Reformation and the conservative Catholic reaction of the 1550s did not help. By the end of the sixteenth century, most of the parish registers survive. There are often gaps during the Civil Wars and Commonwealth, 1642–60, when the regular minister was ejected by the Puritans and records were often ill kept or not at all.

  In 1753 Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act led to separate registers for marriages being created, though baptisms and burials were still recorded in the same book. It will usually be noted thereafter if the marriage was by licence, which as noted in the previous chapter was rare. Books recording banns of marriage also date from that time, due to the above Act being to prevent ‘clandestine marriages’. Books recording banns, however, tend to survive less well than other registers.

  The next major change was Rose’s Act of 1812, which resulted in further regularization of parish registers, leading to more information being recorded there. Different books were now used for the different services, and they were laid out with forms denoting the information to be recorded. Baptism registers recorded date of baptism, Christian name of baby, surname of father and Christian names of both parents (father’s name being omitted if unknown), father’s profession and parish. On 19 March 1820 at Hanwell church, William, born on 31 December 1815, son of William and Harriett Taylor, labourer of Norwood, was baptized. Marriage registers recorded date, names and ages of both parties, with the husband’s occupation. Thus at Hanwell, one example reads as follows, ‘William Bishop of this parish, bachelor, and Jane Lewin of this parish, spinster, were married in the church by banns … this 21st day of November in the year 1819 … in the presence of Joseph Bishop and Fanny Bishop’. In the case of burials, the information is date, name and occupation of deceased. Another Hanwell example on 15 March 1834 was that of Charlotte Obee of Ealing, Middlesex, aged 61. The minister who performed the service would sign his name, too.

  If parish registers do not exist for the period in question, then all may not be lost. In 1598, bishop’s (or parish) transcripts were introduced. The minister had to send to the bishop an annual copy of all the entries in the parish registers. I recall wanting to check whether Thomas Smethurst (a bigamist) really married Mary Durham in 1828 at St Mark’s church, Kennington, but the parish registers were missing for that period. Fortunately the bishop’s transcripts provided the answer (he was). Transcriptions can result in human errors, but where the originals no longer exist they are invaluable.

  If you are fortunate, your ancestors may have been baptized, married or buried in a parish in which the Dade registers were in use. These were registers arranged to a pattern devised by the Revd William Dade. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the dioceses of Chester and York used this system. They contain far more information than was usual prior to 1813 and also have information not used after that year, too. Baptism registers show, apart from the bare minimum, the child’s seniority in the family, the father’s occupation, the names, occupations and residences of the grandparents and the date of the infant’s birth. Burial registers give the cause and date of death.

  It will be highly unlikely that you will ever see an original parish register. Because parish registers were expected to be so popular, it was decide
d by county record offices to provide surrogates. Initially these were microfilmed and so are available thus. These can usually be viewed at the relevant county record office. Phillimore’s Atlas and Index to Parish Registers lists their whereabouts, county by county, because county and diocesan boundaries have changed; some for the West Riding of Yorkshire are located at Nottinghamshire and Lancashire record offices as well as those in the West Riding itself.

  All is not lost if you cannot visit the relevant repository. Some record offices may sell duplicate copies of microfilm of parish registers if they have the parish’s permission to do so. There are other surrogate forms. Paper transcripts of some parish registers, chiefly marriage registers, were published in book form by Phillimore and by family history enthusiasts, sometimes indexed. Record societies have also published parish registers; the Thoresby Society did so for St Peter’s church, Leeds. More recently some registers, especially those for London and Middlesex and West Yorkshire, have been digitized and so are available online at ancestry.co.uk. This makes searching easier, as many can be easily and quickly searched. There is also the International Genealogical Index, which is a vast index to baptisms and marriages only. It was originally available on microfiche but has been online for some years. However, the indexing is patchy; some parishes are covered for centuries, some for a few decades and some not at all. Just because a search is unsuccessful does not mean that the event did not occur, but that it may not be included in the IGI’s coverage. Again, the Phillimore Index is an invaluable tool, because it lists the IGI’s coverage for each parish. The Mormons have also constructed the British Vital Records Index, whose coverage is more extensive than the IGI.

  Other relevant indexes are Pallot’s Index of Marriages and Births, which covers most of the London and many of the Middlesex parishes from 1800–1837 (marriages), and 30,000 baptisms. It can be viewed on ancestry.co.uk. Boyd’s Marriage Index covers many marriages which took place from 1538 to 1837, but the coverage is patchy. Registers from over 4,000 parishes were consulted, and there are 7 million names therein. The index is strong for East Anglia, however, and can be viewed online at Origins.net and on Findmypast.co.uk (the latter also has Boyd’s London Burials, 1538–1872 and London miscellany, 1538–1775). Both the Society of Genealogists’ Library and the Guildhall Library have copies, too, and the former has a vast collection of microfilmed parish registers. The Federation of Family History Societies are working on a National Burial Index, covering 1538 onwards and which has as its best coverage the early nineteenth century. This can be viewed on CD-Rom and on Findmypast.co.uk. Ancestry.co.uk also has a number of miscellaneous parish registers online.

  A word about monumental inscriptions seen inside parish churches and the gravestones outside: these represent only a small proportion of those actually buried there. Most people in our period were too poor to be able to afford a stone tombstone, let alone a plaque inside the church. However if your ancestors were wealthy enough in order to do so, a visit to the church is certainly recommended. Memorials often give additional information about how an ancestor and his or her family wished them to be remembered, as their manifold virtues are listed therein. They may also give information about other family members. Many churches’ inscriptions and gravestones have been transcribed and indexed by members of local family history societies, and these transcriptions are often available from the appropriate society and from the county or borough record office. Findmypast.co.uk has a searchable memorials index.

  Two examples from St Mary’s Acton give a flavour of these.

  Near this Place

  Lies the Body of

  ELIZABETH BARRY

  Of the Parish of St.

  MARY SAVOY, who

  Departed this life

  Ye 7th of November 1713

  Aged 55 years.

  More informative is the following:

  In the vault beneath are deposited the remains of

  HARRIET

  Third daughter of THOMAS and ELIZABETH SUSANNA

  GRAHAM

  And granddaughter of JOHN and ELIZABETH DAVENPORT

  She died 30th September 1806

  Aged 7 years

  Also those of her father

  THAMAS GRAHAM ESQRE

  Of Edmond Castle Cumberland

  And of CLAPHAM Common, Surrey

  Who died 23rd June 1813

  Aged 62 years

  Also the remains of her mother

  ELIZABETH SUSANNA GRAHAM

  Relict of the above named THOMAS GRAHAM ESQRE

  Who died in her house on Clapham Common

  The 10th of August 1844, aged 81 years.

  The Civil Parish

  The parish had many other responsibilities, too, and of a secular nature, especially since the sixteenth century. The most important in terms of money and time was the administration of the Old Poor Law. Earlier legislation to deal with the poor was codified in 1601, replacing the older tradition of voluntary giving to the poor. The new law stated that each parish had to deal with its own poor. These were the people who were unable to support themselves, often due to extreme youth or old age, or infirmity. Unwed mothers with illegitimate children were also often in need. Men who were temporarily out of work due to illness were usually helped. The Act of Settlement of 1662 further defined the law. It stated that the parish only had to deal with those who were legally settled within its boundaries. To have settlement rights in any given parish, one either had to be born there, to have married someone who was born there, to have lived there without claiming relief for a year or to be occupying premises worth more than £10 per year. Those lacking such rights could be refused relief and sent on their way.

  One important set of parish archives in this regard are the vestry minutes. The vestry was the parish’s governing body, composed of the minister and the principal male residents of the parish. Readers of Jane Austen’s Emma may recall references to Mr Knightley and Mr Weston attending parish meetings, but it was not confined to the gentry. Shopkeepers, such as East Hoathley’s Thomas Turner, and farmers also attended. From among these would be the parish officers, churchwarden(s), overseers, surveyor of the highways and constable (sometimes known as headborough and formerly an officer of the manor). These officials were appointed annually, usually at Easter, were unpaid and amateur. They made important decisions at the meetings held throughout the year, often monthly. They had to decide how much money should be levied in the way of rates (see Chapter 10) and how it should be spent. The vestry was responsible for the relief of the local poor, the upkeep of local roads and bridges and the maintenance of the church fabric. These parish officers were answerable to the JPs(justices of the peace) at quarter sessions, and the latter had to settle disputes between the parishes, which usually concerned poor relief.

  Parish chest, repository of parish records, St Martin’s, West Drayton, Middlesex, 2010. Author.

  These important decisions were recorded in vestry minute books and other sources. Vestry minutes record the date of each meeting, with a list of those who attended, so if your ancestor was among the parish elite you can trace how long he was in the parish by when he is first and last listed here. They may include nothing else but total annual expenditure and income. Some, though, are far more informative. They list the decisions that were made. These often refer to other parishioners by name. Those in need of relief may be mentioned, and the reasons for relief may well be given, such as sickness, unemployment or old age. Orphans might be apprenticed to a master, as was the fictional Oliver Twist. An example from the Hanwell Vestry Minutes of 2 April 1827 records the names of three vestrymen at the meeting, plus the overseer, his deputy and a churchwarden. At the meeting, ‘Mrs Talbot applied for some clothing for her daughter, who was gone out to service. Agreed that the mother and child meet Mr Berry [the deputy overseer] at Brentford tomorrow or as soon as convenient to be provided with necessaries for the said purpose.’

  The parish officers, as listed above, were important loc
al figures. The most hard-working, at least in theory, were the overseers, because they had to deal face to face with the local poor. All these officials kept accounts books, and some survive, mostly those of churchwardens and overseers. These give a good indication of what these officials actually did. These often allude to the people to whom poor relief was paid. There could be lists of parishioners in claim of relief. Often there were people who received a regular income from the parish, and these were listed in the overseers’ disbursement books. Then there were those who received one-off payments to tide them over a temporary crisis. These payments were considered to be outdoor relief. They were often in money, but not always so. Payments could be in kind, including the provision of food, clothing and fuel. Sometimes travellers might be relieved, such as soldiers and sailors returning home, or pregnant women. The latter were especially important to move on, because if they gave birth in the parish, they would acquire legal settlement and so be a burden on the rates. However these people are rarely named and accounts merely refer to giving money to travelling strangers.

  For the parish of Norwood, there are lists of widows who received a regular pension. In 1653 it was noted, ‘Item payd to the widow Bland from the 27th day of February to the 25th day of March 0-8-0 [8s]’. Six other widows were also listed (surnames only) and the sums paid to them, four shillings only. In 1680, the overseers recorded they paid tradesmen various sums for goods required. Mr Room received 2s 5½d ‘for cloaths’ and Thomas Beaton had two shillings ‘for making two coats and waistcoats’.