Birth Marriage and Death before 1837

The History

Until 1837 there was no legal requirement to register Births, Deaths or Marriages.

Most people chose to mark these events with a religious ceremony and so involved the Church of England or a Non Conformist religion.

For administrative and religious reasons most of the churches chose to record this information.

As there were no rules set the information recorded varies from the basic name and date to a fuller account of the event and those present.

Quaker records often list the whole of the congregation as witnesses.

There records are normally referred to as Parish Registers.

Even after civil registration began in 1837 many churched maintained their own register of BMD events.

They are one the prime source for family historians

What records can you find?

Parish Registers date back to the 1500's in older Parish Churches.

The best place to see Parish records are County Records Offices who keep the original records.

In most cases these a viewed on microfiche or have been digitalised.

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Some of the records have been transcribed and are available on CD from commercial sources and Family History Societies as well as commercial web sites such and Ancestry.

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FreeBMD offers names from parish registers free of charge although there is no background information available with the records.

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The National Archives have many records of Non Conformist records including Methodists, Baptists and Quakers from 1791 to 1921.

These can be searched at the National Archives.

They are also available at the Genealogist on a paid search basis.

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Some churches may have retained copies of their registers.

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