Genealogy Forum UK

I'm now into pre 1837 territory with a lot of my research, so having to rely upon parish records for tracing individuals. What bothers me is that, whilst it's possible to find what look like correct entries and to expand my tree back generation after generation, there's no real way to verify that the people I'm listing are genuinely connected with my tree. It's easy with post 1841 entries - you just look for siblings in censuses and then check for matching parish records until you come up with a firm family group. But you can't do this without censuses and there's an increased risk of listing a correctly named but unconnected individual? Anyone got any tips?!

I work with parish records all the time. Start with the IGI on family search and using a parent search find all the children for a given pair of parents in the relavant time period. Then get hold of the actual parish record and read it. I have found that the LDS transcribers have often missed at least one child in a family ( usually the one I'm most interested in) also read the burials. Different clerks put different information into the burials but usually identified 'wife of', ' son of' and 'daughter of' as well as age. So they help account for disappearing names of children and such
In about 1806-1811, most parishes started using the standard box chart form for recording baptisms which includes both parents name, where they were living and the father's occupation. THis is a great help.
When you have exhausted the parish registers, look for wills, apprentice papers, city directories and court cases, etc. The national archives and A2A are very useful for these. If your ancestors worked for a large estate - like Longleat- reading the estate papers can also prove useful. Also look at the heading of each section of the parish registers as an ancestor may have served in a church warden capacity and would be noted

What parishes are you interested in. I may have some of the records

I always thought that Hugh Walliss's batch numbers were a full reflection of the records on the IGI. I always wondered why there was no batch number shown for marriages in Clent, only baptisms. This week I stumbled across M035173 which lists marriages over about a 100 year period in Clent. A great find but I just wonder how many more have been missed ?

Hi Tex that is very useful to know.
We could do with storing that somewhere in the section - will add it to my Clent look up offer note - and see if we can add it to the useful info we have going in the Black Country Genealogy section.

I had this information from someone.....

It was only with the introduction of pre-printed registers in the Church of England that information additional to the names of the parties concerned was required. For Baptisms and Burials these registers were introduced in 1813. For Baptisms this required in addition to the date of baptism and the names of the parties concerned, the abode of the parents and the occupation of the father. The Burial register required the date of burial, the name of the person and their abode and age.

For marriages, the format of the entry in the parish register was changed by the Hardwick Marriage Act such that after 1754, the parishes of the parties being married was required to be stated. After 1837, the format changed to the same as the civil marriage certificate requiring the abode, occupation, father's name and occupation to be given for both the bride and the groom.

Prior to these dates it was at the whim of the incumbent or his clerk as to whether any additional information was included in the register other than the date and the names of the parties concerned.

The above comments apply specifically to the Church of England. For non-conformists, it was the individual denominations/chapels that decided as to what they should include in their registers (that is if they did indeed keep a register). Again, though, for marriages after 1837 they were required to adopt the standard marriage certificate format.

The biggest problem with parish registers on the IGI is the batches are very selective in years and only concentrate on one type of event - baptism or marriage. Also many of the transcriptions of English parishes were done very early on so the skills of the transcribers weren't as polished. They have improved immensely over the years.
On every parish register I've read, I've found more children and marriages than show on the IGI lists.
One little bit that I've found very helpful is that after 1837 the parish register marrige entry is an exact duplicate of a certificate - so-- if you have several marriages in the same parish - get the parish register and make copies of the relavant entries - it's alot cheaper than sending for certificates