Hide
hide
Hide

West Ogwell Parish Registers

Introduction

This is a transcript of all the surviving parish registers of West Ogwell 1681-1900, deposited at the Devon Heritage Centre at Exeter. Also transcribed are the surviving Bishop’s Transcripts that pre-date the registers and those that contain events not listed in the registers.Events taken from the Bishops Transcripts have been added in the appropriate place & are noted where they occur. I have also included an incomplete list of Churchwardens for the period, and four memorandum found in the registers.

The first register is a masterpiece of disorganisation from the beginning up to 1733. Prior to 1733 there is no regular sequence with events seemingly being entered in any vacant space. Some of the entries are undoubtedly duplicated, but these are retained in this transcript. In an attempt to alleviate the difficulty in finding specific entries during this period, I have added a page number to all the entries for the period 1681-1733; the page number relates to the page frames as  they appear on the  microfiche held at the Devon Heritage Centre at Exeter. After 1733 the registers become more organised, but I have noted any inconsistencies where they occur & added page numbers if necessary.

West Ogwell is a small & sparsely populated parish. The 1841 census returned a population of 51 & the 1891 census 39. In consequence of  this small  population there  are some  years when there were no events to record. Where I have found this stated in the registers & Bishops Transcripts, I have indicated this by quotation marks. In the Bishops Transcripts only, where I have found no report of an event, these are noted by the use of square brackets.

I have not “modernised” any dates, therefore prior to 1752 the calendar year runs from March 25th to March 24th. Dates seemingly out of sequence, or that over run the end of the year are as found in the registers or Bishop’s Transcript’s.

Find My Past has images of all the deposited parish registers to 1915 on its website, with the exception of Marriages 1755-1813, which are copies of the transcripts compiled by the Devon Family History Society.

My thanks to the ever helpful staff of the Devon Heritage Centre at Exeter for allowing me access to the original registers & Bishop’s Transcripts.

 

Jeff Ellis, Newton Abbot, 2016