Baptism, Marriage and Burial Records: 1538 to 1837
Parish records are a valuable resource for researching your family tree, as civil registration and census returns do not go back further than c.1840. Parish records can extend your research back to the time of King Henry VIII, with most records going back to the 1600s (and some going back to the 1500s!). These records were kept in a book in the church - today, they are kept in a County Record Office. You can read a short history of Parish Records on the introduction page.
View Parish Records Online and On CD
Transcribing parish records is a mammoth task but with the aid of both volunteers and overseas transcribers a growing number of records are available online. TheGenealogist had the widest coverage of records from 1215 to 2005, and all the data is checked by experts for accuracy and quality.
In addition to this, Genealogy Supplies has a great wealth of genealogical data and books on CD, as well as software and storage, thus making the company an invaluable resource to family historians.
Tracing your Ancestors back to Parish Records
Birth, Marriage and Death records can be used to trace your ancestry back to 1837, where you can begin using Parish Records. The complete range of birth, marriage and death records (BMDs) are available online at BMDindex.co.uk - there are records from 1837 - 2004 as published by the General Records Office (GRO) - that's 168 years of data, or an amazing 250 million events!
Phillimore Parish Records
W.P. Phillimore was a genealogist who published transcriptions of Parish Registers around 1890. Phillimore Parish Registers is a series of books containing transcripts of these records, however they 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.Read more about W.P. Phillimore on the information page.
View Parish Records Online and On CD