Parish Registers

How to trace your lineage back using Parish Registers

In general births were not recorded but children were generally baptised within 2-3 months of their birth. The baptism records will usually give the name of the child's parents and their 'abode'. You can then use this information to find the marriage record of the parents. The marriage record will usually tell you the name of both parties and their parents names. Use that to find the baptism records of the parents, and so on.

Information found in the Registers

There may also be other information in the records - for example, in a marriage record, the Bride's Parish may be noted.

The Original Registers

The original parish registers are usually stored in a county record office. These can be viewed by the public, but the archivists are reluctant to allow handling of these old and unique books.

W.P Phillimore & Phillimore's Marriage Registers

Phillimore, born William Phillimore Watts Stiff, was the son of Dr Stiff, a Nottingham Doctor. He later took the name Phillimore from the family of his grandmother. He became an Oxford-educated lawyer, and founded a British and Scottish Record Society along with the Canterbury and York Society. After he resigned from these societies, he turned his attention to his native country, and began the transcription and printing of marriage registers - these became known as Phillimore's Marriage Registers. When he died in 1914, he had covered 1200 parishes from different counties in 200 volumes.

However, Phillimore's Marriage Registers do not cover all the parishes or complete dates - this depends on the surviving registers and the ones Phillimore collected, so there may be some omissions. In some counties, the coverage of parishes is very good, whereas in other counties just a few parishes were transcribed - most counties do not have every parish transcribed.