Access to Information Prior to Registration
Amongst the most informative of sources available from which to
extract information relating to births, deaths and marriages, along
with other essential information, are County or Parish Registers which
go back to 1538, though their accuracy is often open to debate. The
accuracy of the entry might not however always be attributed to the
skill or otherwise of the recorder; if that person to whom the entry
pertained was illiterate and could not provide the accurate spelling of
his or her own name, then the recorder would use his own judgement
and make the entry as he believed it to be.
The fact that such anomalies creep many times into the history of just
one family, well explains the changes one often finds to the surname
of today's descendants from those whose records were entered
centuries before.
County (Parish) Registers
In the majority of instances, parish records are now maintained at
central libraries in larger cities, or at the various County Record
Offices.
Photocopies of entries in parish registers can usually be obtained for a
small sum. Official records such as birth, marriage or death certificates
might also be obtained, but will cost you a few dollars for each copy
requested; still not a high price to pay for the amount of information
most official documents contain, and which can greatly reduce the
time you might otherwise spend researching one minor point which
might be provided on the certificate itself.
Parish registers in England go back as far as 1538, to the time when
Thomas Cromwell ordered all churches to maintain records of
baptisms, marriages and burials within the area of their jurisdiction.
From 1598, parish clerks were ordered to forward transcripts of the
registers every year to their local bishop. This continued until 1837
when civil registration came into being.
Most parish registers are now available for inspection at County Record
Offices (CROs), in the main town or city of the county. On a few
isolated occasions one comes by registers which have not been
deposited as ordered with appropriate bishops, such documents
usually being well cared for by the vicar or other representative in the
parish concerned.
Of parish registers themselves a few brief notes might be made.
Marriage records can prove particularly useful since they provide the
names of both parties, the groom's occupation, their parishes, marital
status, and sometimes details of bride's father, parties' ages, and so
on.
Marriages during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can
present tremendous problems for the researcher, since the need to
have banns read and licences obtained could be expensive, lengthy
and problematic. Many couples therefore hid under the cloak of
ceremonies carried out secretly by parsons who would ask little if
anything of the couple but enough to comply with basic legal
requirements. Sometimes no-one checked too carefully on the
personal credentials either, and it is almost certain that a great many
'marriages' carried out during the period are anything near as binding
as the parties to them might have thought.
Elopements, bigamy and fly-by-night marriages flourished under the
practice which can lead many genealogists to despair as the plot grows
ever thicker. In 1754 an Act of Parliament was passed aimed at
eliminating clandestine marriages. Many ceremonies were to be
performed in parish churches or other designated religious premises.
Baptism records provide a great deal of information regarding our
ancestors, usually giving the father's surname for legitimate children -
the mother's for illegitimate - and also usually indicating the place of
birth, father's occupation, clergyman at the ceremony and sometimes
a few other snippets of useful information.
Parish registers noted baptisms, not births. Therefore it is usual only
to find conformists registered in this way. Any ancestor not recorded in
parish registers might therefore belong to non-conforist persuasions
such as Quakers, Jews and Roman Catholics, all of which kept their
own usually well-maintained records.
Non-conformist records, that is of those not belonging to the Church
of England, can make excellent reading and yield much useful
information, particularly since various other denominations were a
great deal more astute in their approach to record keeping than were
the majority of parish clerks. Appropriate details of Roman Catholics,
Jews, Non-conformist Protestants and Huguenots, might be available
from religious registers, many of them held in followers' meeting
places in nearby large towns and cities. Alternatively societies operate
to provide access to appropriate information. The readers' attention is
drawn to the resources section at the end of this book, from which
sources he or she might often find invaluable records available for
consultation.