Anglican Parish Registers and their Finding Aids
Before the national registration of vital events started in 1837, the main source of information about births, marriages and deaths is the parish register or the similar relevant record kept by members of nonconformist denominations.
In many cases, however, it should be remembered that the event recorded is the baptism, rather than birth, and burial records rather than those of death. Nevertheless, parish registers are extremely important records for researching family history from the sixteenth century.
Church records did not come to an end when the state introduced Civil Registration. Religious sects continued to record those who had undergone its ceremonies long after 1837, even until the present.
The search for the family usually begins with information learned from a census return. If the place of birth of an individual is stated, it may be that this was where the child was baptised. However, place of birth and place of baptism were not always the same.
This volume compiled by Dr Sylvia Watts