What's in the Parish Registers?

Tracing Ancestors in the UK - Beginners Section 5 - The Parish Registers
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Transcript

So what we're going to do now is just go through some sample parish registers so that you can see the different types of register that I was talking about earlier, and so that you know what to expect when you start your own research. We'll start with 19th century parish registers and work backwards, as this is the way you'll be researching when you start using information that you have found in the census records. The first example is a post 1812 baptism register. Now, you've already seen one of these when we looked at one from the Isle of Man in my last lecture. This one is from Cali Hurst in Manchester in Lancashire. And, of course, as you saw before, there's a column for the name of the child, the parents names and surname, the place of abode and the occupation of the Father.

In this particular example the incumbent has written in the actual date of birth in the margin, which does happen occasionally and it's always very useful. The second example is from the post 1812 burial registers. This one is from Liverpool. And you can see that the format is very similar to the baptisms with a column for each piece of information. In this case, it is the name of the deceased, the place of abode, the date of burial and the age. The ages and burial records can be very useful for establishing an approximate date of birth, but don't rely on them too much as the friends and family of the deceased we're not always sure of the person's age themselves.

And often these were guesses. Now, if you're at all observant, you might notice in this example, that many of the deceased art Children. This page includes one of my own relatives, Moses Henry Stickney. Infant mortality rates were very high, particularly in poor areas right up until the 20th century. And in times of epidemics such as cholera, you will find many pages like this. on a happy note, let's have a look at a couple of marriage risk registers.

In this example, this is a page from the post 1837 registers. And as we have discussed, the information in these is exactly the same as the marriage certificates, except that we can see two marriages per page. But the details are exactly the same with the father's names, occupations and the names of witnesses. Now between 1754 and 1830s Seven marriage registers looked like this. Unlike the earlier baptism and burial records, this is again a standardized format, but has a little less information than the post 1837 ones. On the top right is the marriage of my four times great grandfather Moses Stickney, and his wife Margaret Oh rook.

In this case Moses occupation of Mariner is given. These don't always show the occupation and will often just state whether that bachelor or spinster or widow or widower Margaret, you might notice is also described as a minor, which means she was under the age of consent, so the marriage would have had to have taken place with the formal consent of her father. This also tells us that they were married by license rather than the usual bands. It also gives us the date of the marriage Names of witnesses. Next, we're going back to baptisms this time before 1812. And you can see that these are not standardized at all, and generally written in whichever way the incumbent wished.

And you can see that the information is fairly basic. Look closely and you will see that these are not just baptisms, but also include burials. So some thinkers kept these records separate, and some didn't. It really varies from parish to parish at this time. going even further back here is an example of a mid 17th century register from Oxbridge in Middlesex. As you can see, these are often even more disorganized, including baptisms burials and marriages on the same page.

You will also see that the writing at this date can begin to look a little difficult. But the more you practice looking at old handwriting, the better you will get at it. So that's it for now, that should have prepared you for what to expect when you're looking at the original registers yourself. The following two lectures will be to ScreenFlow is showing a couple of the ways you can best use online registers. So I would recommend that you watch these before you start your own research.

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