Genealogy Forum UK

Any tips as to how I can uncover information prior to 1841 records?

I have gone as far as 1796 for my earliest ancestor, but beyond that am I looking at Parish records?

Hi Nick, think your title should be PRE 1841 But Pre - 1837, the basic source is the parish registers (the IGI, like BVRI,
is a valuable but very incomplete and sometimes inaccurate index to these
and excludes vital information like marriage witnesses) but they are only a
starting point. Fill in the information from them with other material from
settlement papers, directories, parish rates, parish poor law payments,
bastardy papers, apprenticeship records, court proceedings, muster rolls,
protestation rolls, hearth tax, visitation records... Settlement and removal
examinations can be especially rewarding in providing a "mini-autobiography"
of the person concerned. HTH from Linell.

Here's a link to the Quinton Local History Society:-

http://www.qlhs.org.uk/

Nick, there are baps, marriages and burials in the Halesowen Register for Toy and Tay from the 1600's. May be some before then, but the register's I have don't go back any further than that. HTH from Linell.

Well I think my line of attack should be to search for Toy's who were born in Worcestershire, be it Halesowen, Stourbridge, even Kidderminster 20 years prior to the birth of the last known Toy I have had confirmed.

And then see if I can see a pattern, look at addresses in the 1841 census.

@Linell, the Halesowen Register - is that freely available? I am using Ancestry and it just searches all kind of records.

Have you tried here,

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/ ... esults.asp

I will do this when I get in tonight.

Really happy with the possibilities that this forum has given me.

Is this completed Nick?
Jo