CUMBERLAND
The information on this page, and on the accompanying
Town & Parish pages is organised by the set of subject
headings which the LDS Family History Library use for categorising
genealogical research material. Below are the available headings for
Cumberland; but see
How the information on this server is presented to the user for
further details, and for an overall list. [Hint: Press the "Back" arrow
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Description in 1887
"CUMBERLAND, A maritime and border county of England
[Map (above) shows location],
having the counties of
Dumfries and Roxburgh on the north, Northumberland and Durham on the east,
Westmorland and Lancashire on the south, the Irish Sea on the west, and the
Solway Firth on the NW.; length, NE. and SW., 75 miles; extreme breadth, E. and
W., 45 miles; average breadth, 22 miles; coast line, about 75 miles; area,
970,161 acres, population 250,647. The coast on the Solway is low and sandy, but
on the Irish Sea it is lofty and rugged; chief promontory, St Bees Head. In the
NW. the country is open and flat; it is watered by the Eden and other streams,
and consists chiefly of verdant meadows and good arable land. From this plain
the surface rises towards the east and south into a region with deep defiles or
dales, which form the mountainous district of "The Lakes".
Coal and iron are extensively worked in the west, the coalfield stretching from
the neighbourhood of Whitehaven to that of Maryport. Numerous blast furnaces are
constantly at work. Plumbago or black lead is obtained in considerable
quantities near Keswick. Slate, limestone, and sandstone are abundant. Copper,
cobalt, antimony, manganese, and gypsum are also found. Owing to the general
elevation of the land, and the moisture of the climate, the cultivation of the
soil is less attended to than the rearing of sheep and cattle. The dairy produce
is very considerable. Woollen manufactures are carried on to some extent at
Carlisle and some other places The County comprises 5 wards, 208 parishes, the
parliamentary and municipal borough of Carlisle (1 member), and the
parliamentary borough of Whitehaven (1 member). It is mostly in the diocese of
Carlisle. For parliamentary purposes it is divided into 4 divisions, viz.,
Northern or Eskdale, Mid or Penrith, Cockermouth, and Western or Egremont, 1
member for each division." [Bartholemew's
Gazetteer of the British Isles, 1887]
- All Cumberland pages may be searched using the
GENUKI Search engine.
The GENUKI Parish Locator
may be used to identify which town or parish a place is located in.
- There is a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file
for these Cumberland pages.
- Researchers may find one or more of the
Cumberland Mailing Lists useful in their research; and Cumberland
Surnames being researched are listed within Graham Jaunay's
On-line English Names Directory.
- FreeCEN is an ongoing volunteer-based project
to provide a 'free to view' online searchable database of the 19th century UK census returns.
Volunteers are being sought to assist with transcribing - visit the
FreeCen Project page to see each
county's status as well as a FAQ for volunteers.
- A list of the major items (including external links) in the Cumberland section of
GENUKI is provided on a separate page of Quick Links.
- Steve Bulman's Images of Cumbria
site provides parish descriptions and photographs, as well as an excellent bibliography and glossary.
- Churches in Cumbria
(part of the Visit Cumbria website)
features Carlisle Cathedral, and over 100 smaller churches around Cumbria.
- You may also find it worthwhile searching in the GENUKI church database.
Enter the name of the place in which the church is located:
- Some Cumberland parish registers (in PDF format, at a modest price)
are available from the
English Parish Registers website. Added 22 Nov 2008.
- Transcriptions of a selection of Cumberland parish records
are available from the
"Cumberland Roots" website. Added 10 May 2006.
- The searchable LDS website - IGI and Familysearch
Note on using IGI Batch Numbers:
It is not always easy to locate your ancestors in the IGI using the search mechanisms provided at
the above LDS site. Manually typing the batch numbers into the IGI search screen can be tedious.
Hugh Wallis has made an exhaustive search of the likely ranges of batch numbers and created a
database of those numbers and the source records that they apply to. A very powerful feature included
is a hotlink from each batch number to the actual search engine provided at the Family Search site,
including the ability to enter the surname you are looking for. This makes it very easy to search all the
batches for a particular geographic location using just the last name you are searching for - something
that is not possible directly from the LDS site without doing a lot of typing. This is
Hugh Wallis's site.
- The Society of Genealogists web site has a
list of their holdings of
Parish Register Copies for Cumberland. Added 12 May 2006.
- Information on the location of
Quaker Records in
Cumberland provided by the Quaker FHS.
- Copies of certificates of Birth, Death and Marriage may be obtained from either
the General Register Office (GRO), or from the Superintendent Registrar's Office in
the District they were first issued. If the District no longer exists, this would be the
Office to which its registers have been moved.
- If ordering from a District (Superintendant's) Register Office, please note the following:
- the cost of a certificate is £7.00 (from 1st April 2003)
- send a Sterling cheque payable to the Superintendent Registrar
plus return postage or two International Reply Coupons;
- the General Register Office (GRO) Index references (available via FreeBMD) are of no value;
- for marriage certificates, the precise place of marriage must be given;
- Civil Registration in England and Wales began on July 1st 1837.
Information about which Local Register Office to contact may be found in Brett
Langston's list of
Cumberland Registration Districts (1837-1974).
- If you have a GRO reference, you can now order certificates through
the General Register Office's own website, and their
Certificate Ordering Service for the same price as locally.
You can obtain a GRO reference in several ways:-
- Searching microfilm or fiche at a Library or LDS Family History Centre.
- FreeBMD is an ongoing project to make the General
Register Office (GRO) Indexes freely available online. More volunteers are needed and details of how you can help are available on-site.
- findmypast.com (formerly 1837online) - images of the complete BMD indexes from the GRO online. Fee payable
- The images are also available on Ancestry.co.uk for which
a subscription provides access to a wide range of other records.
- The Prison Service Museum near Rugby houses HM Prison Service's historical
collection of exhibits, illustrating the history of imprisonment from medieval times
to the present day. Housed in a converted stable block, the museum contains
reconstructions of Victorian prison architecture, and exhibits include the
last set of Gibbet Irons used in England. Smaller items include bone
carvings and paintings made by prisoners in their cells, and a nineteenth
century sampler embroidered by a female prisoner from her own hair
Admission to the museum is by appointment only, please contact:-
The Curator,
HM Prison Service Museum,
Newbold Revel,
Rugby,
CV23 0TH
Tel: 01788 834168
[Information compiled from "The Penal Lexicon Home Page",
formerly at www.penlex.org.uk/pages/index.html.]
- For help finding your ancestors onboard ship -
The Ships List - of
particular interest are the large number of transcribed passenger lists,
and records of some Marriages at Sea. Added 10 Dec 2007.
- Nigel Batty-Smith's site providing
UK Genealogy Archives of Cumberland has a description of the county
from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1894-5.
- The section of The National Gazetteer (1868) relating
to Cumberland - transcribed by Colin Hinson.
- The transcription of the section for Miscellaneous Descriptions from
the National Gazetteer (1868) provided by Colin Hinson. Included
here are the descriptions of major topological features (rivers, hills &c.)
and a descriptions of the county ward divisions.
- You may also find it worthwhile searching in the GENUKI Gazetteer:-
The GENUKI Gazetteer covers the whole of England, Wales and Scotland and can be searched by
place-name (or part of a place-name) or Ordnance Survey Grid Reference (six-figure, eg NY390550).
If there are multiple place-names matching the name you enter, you will be presented initially with a
drop-down list of the matching place-names with their distances and bearings from Carlisle.
-
English Heritage Viewfinder - site with historic photographs,
searchable by county. Has some unusual ones of the Industrial
Age which won't be found amongst the more usual postcard collections!.
-
The Francis Frith Collection - a collection of
over 700,000 photographs of the UK, Europe and the Middle East taken by the
Victorian photographer Francis Frith.
- A Vision of Britain Through Time -
information about your home area from the 2001 census, and from each British
census back to 1801. Presented both as maps of the whole country and as graphs
showing change over time.
- Brian Pears is providing two
LNER Wartime Evacuation Documents (N.EVAC 2 and N.EVAC 3) describing arrangements
for evacuating children from Newcastle and Gateshead to rural parts of Northumberland, Co Durham,
Yorkshire, Cumberland and Westmorland. The second document includes lists of
schools with details of their places and times of departure and their destinations. Added 6 Jan 2006.
- A digital library of medieval and modern sources of the history of the British Isles -
British History Online.
Notable sources include Journals of the House of Commons and House of
Lords, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, and the Victoria County History.
Added 14 Oct 2005.
- An
Encyclopaedia of British History: 1700-1950 - useful for seeing
local events against a national perspective. Scroll down the introductory
page on this site to see topics - Monarchy, Child Labour, The Railways, &c.
- The Cumbria Local History Federation
provides a diary of local history and related events in and around Cumbria.
- The Domesday Book Online
"to enable visitors to find out the history of the Domesday Book and to
give an insight into life at the time of its compilation". Note this site does not
provide the original text, but does include a list settlements existing in 1086.
- Pat Johnson has a large collection of original
Family Deeds. Abstracts, with name and parish indexes are provided onsite,
with transcriptions of the full documents available for a modest fee. In addtion, the original
deed may also be available for purchase if required. Added 19 Sep 2007.
- Some abstracts of
Cumberland Feet of Fines (land conveyances) covering 1485-1509 - on
Chris Phillips
Medieval English Genealogy web site. Added 22 May 2007.
- Mike Durtnall is providing a country-wide collection of
Historical Manuscripts
Pages recording details of deeds that have been offered for sale on eBay
and in auction catalogues. In most cases whereabouts of the documents will be
unknown, but sufficient details of the property involved and of buyers, sellers,
mortages, &c. is provided to make them a useful research tool.
Added 9 Mar 2007.
- The Harvard Law School Library's
English Deeds Collection contains detailed summaries of some Deeds relating to
Cumberland. The site 'Search' for 'cumberland' may be expected to return four entries.
Added 27 Apr 2006.
- Robin Alston has created
The Country House Database, a very useful reference source,
"listing country houses in the British Isles from the late medieval
period to ca. 1850, together with an index to all the families so far
traced as having occupied them." Includes a section on
Cumberland.
- British
History Online - Ordnance Survey 1:10,560 Maps -
The County Series of Ordnance Survey maps for Great Britain.
Begun in 1840, this is the first comprehensive historic mapping of
England, Scotland and Wales. Added 11 Mar 2009.
- Access to various satellite map sites (Google, MS Live, &c.) via the
convenient front end of Flash Earth.
Added 16 Jun 2007.
- The London Ancestor
site has maps from the 1885 Boundary Commissioners report for all parts
of the British Isles, including
Cumberland [Northern section] and
Cumberland [Southern section] (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1885)
- A most useful set of maps for the whole of England and Wales,
showing parish boundaries, on a one inch to the mile scale, is available on
CD-ROM for a modest price - see:
Kain, R.J.P., Oliver, R.R.,
Historic Maps
of England and Wales: Boundaries before 1850. Available on CD from
History Data Service, UK Data Archive, 17 May 2001. SN: 4348.
- The Old Maps web site
has a wonderful series of 1:10,560 scale historical maps for
the whole of the UK available on-line.
- The
Genmaps site contains a fine collection of Old Maps of the British
Isles for Genealogists and Historians. In particular, see
Old Maps of Cumberland.
- The above Genmaps Links pages lists
Great Britain - Medieval Maps, which in turn provides several maps
including an intriguing
Ecclesiastical Map of the British Isles in the Middle Ages,
which shows the principal Monasteries, demonstrating some of the
earliest centres of habitation and influence.
- Detailed Maps of the area you may be interested in Cumberland/Cumbria
are viewable at the
UK Street Map Page.
The site provides a most useful service, with superb address searching
and street map facilities for anywhere in mainland Great Britain.
- Clear, Large Type and Braille Maps. Added 11 Feb 2006.
David Hawgood has produced
Maps of Cumberland with Braille labels (large print labels) to help people
with visual disabilities, with similar
Tactile and large print Maps for other English counties.
There is an article on David's website,
Production of Tactile maps with Braille labels
explaining how these maps have been produced.
- Medical Heritage of Great Britain,
a site produced by the Bath & Wessex Medical History Group,
providing detailed information on a county level of the history of medical
treatments, and locations of some associated buildings.
- Two very comprehensive sites featuring Castles and Fortifications -
CastleUK.net, and
The Gatehouse.
Added 3 Sep 2005.
- The Age of Nelson - a
website providing general information about the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars 1793-1815, and specifically searchable databases of those present at
Trafalgar (and more) and of all Commissioned Naval Officers 1787-1822.
- Names from Musters of the Cumberland Militia 1781-82
are available for purchase on floppy disk or microfiche through
Family History Indexes
(the link to
Militia Musters is part way down the page).
-
Cumberland and Westmorland Newspaper Transcriptions,
a compilation of entries from various Cumberland and Westmorland Genealogy
Mailing Lists. Added 10 May 2006.
- The Newspaper Library at Colindale - my current information (October 2007) is
that the BL is going to close Colindale, transferring its archives to Boston Spa.
Newspapers will be viewable on film only at the British Library, until such time as
their holdings are digitised. See the British Library's
Newspapers Digitisation Project for up-to-date details of research facilities.
Updated 13 Nov 2008.
- For other English Newspapers see
OnlineNewspapers.com - England.
- A site "dedicated to the Workhouse - its buildings,
its inmates, its staff and administrators, and even its poets..." -
The Workhouse -
created by Peter Higginbotham.
- Information about Workhouses and Poor Law Institutions on the
Rossbret Institutions Website,
which also includes Asylums, Almshouses, Gaols (Prisons), Dispensaries,
Hospitals (Infirmaries), Reformatories (Industrial Schools), and Orphanages,
in many cases listing individual premises.
-
The Regency Collection has a section on Postal History, and
also includes other interesting material relating to the Regency period -
e.g. Turnpike Trusts, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, and more.
- In general terms, Wills prior to 1858 of people having property within the
ancient Diocese of Carlisle were proved in the Consistory Court there.
Records from 1548 to 1858 include original wills, letters of administration
and inventories, although there are significant gaps in the years
before 1661. These are deposited with the County Record Office at Carlisle.
Comprehensive indexes exist, at the Carlisle CRO, in card files
easily accessible in the reading room. The indexes cover from
1617 to 1941, listing the year of probate and the residence of
the deceased. This is extraordinarily helpful in distinguishing
between many individuals of the same name. Microfilm of many of
these records, and a partial typescript of the indexes, is available
at the Kendal office of the CRO.
- The Province of York covered most of northern England, including
Bewcastle, and anyone who died leaving property in more than one
diocese within the province would have their will proved in the
Prerogative Court of the Archbishop of York (PCY) or sometimes
in the Chancery Court of the Archbishop of York. These records
are now deposited with York University,
Borthwick Institute of Historical Research
- For probate from 1858 on, and general information, see our
England - Probate page.
- We have begun a collection of pages listing details of
Cumberland Probate Records
from the above sources.
You are invited to submit abstracts of Wills collected during your
own research, as well as to use the information for locating those
elusive female lines. Please help us in building this collection!
- See also Cumberland Probate Records
Online for an overview, and links to online collections elsewhere.
- A brief history of
Education in England (3 parts).
- If you are interested in finding out whether your
dearest school friends are also researching their family trees,
check out Friends United,
a site devoted to reuniting old school and college friends.
- Mother Bedford -
"a website devoted primarily to the history of Old-Bedford County,
Pennsylvania during the American Revolutionary War period" -
a fascinating site including items of general historical interest eg:
- Apposite to the time of adding:
The Celebration of Christmas.
- Examples of music our ancestors may have enjoyed:
The Music of the 1770s: a Directory.
-
Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516 -
The Gazetteer, compiled by Dr Samantha Letters is a catalogue of Markets and Fairs
in Medieval England and Wales. First comprehensive National Survey, with detailed
information about grants of Charters to all Market Towns.
-
Victorian Social History: An Overview - Public Health,
Education, Conditions of Life and Labour.
- Costume
History - from Ancient Babylon through to 1990s - a very comprehensive
site on Fashion and Dress through the ages. Has images to illustrate
what my great*6 aunt Mary OUTRAM might have been wearing on top of her
"second best stays", one of the items she left in her will of 1769
to a young female relative!
- The E 179 Database
(on the National Archives website) contains detailed information about over
26,000 documents relating to the taxation of lay people in England and Wales
between c.1200 and c.1700. These documents are likely to contain many names.
This county is maintained by
Rosemary Lockie with help and information
provided by a number of other volunteers.
[Beginning on 8th September 2004 - created originally by Don Noble]
GENUKI contains many hyperlinks and directives to sites
developed by others. They are provided for your convenience only. We do
not control nor guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or
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being 'broken', or otherwise unavailable, our only recourse is to
remove that link.
© Copyright Don Noble, GENUKI and Contributors 1996-2009, &c.
GENUKI is a registered trade mark of the charitable trust GENUKI, see
About GENUKI as an Organisation
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URL of this page: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/CUL/index.html
[Adopted 8 Sep 2004. Last updated 24 Apr 2009 - 18:09 by Rosemary Lockie]
