GENUKI: Church Records information for Dorset and places above it in the hierarchy

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Dorset

The Society of Genealogists maintains copies of many parish records in their library. Search the parishes in Dorset which are included in their holdings.

The Dorset History Centre hold many of the original Parish registers for Dorset. These are the Parish Registers they hold.

Information of the location of Quaker Records in Dorset provided by the Quaker FHS.

England

England - Church Records - links and information.

England:- Church Records

The Open Library has made Charles Cox's 1910 publication The parish registers of England available online.
The L.D.S. (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) have now provided online search facilities for the I.G.I. (International Genealogical Index). As well as the general search facility, there is also a Custom Search page allowing more refined searches. Hugh Wallis has provided a search facility which greatly simplifies searching by batch number. See also Finding L.D.S. Batch Numbers.
The FreeREG Project provides free Internet searches of baptism, marriage, and burial records, which have been transcribed from English and Welsh parish and non-conformist church registers.
The largest single collection of Parish Register copies and transcripts is at the Society of Genealogists, and these searched for in the (online) catalogue of the library of the Society of Genealogists.
The contents of missing Parish Registers can often be obtained by finding the copies that since 1598 have had to be made annually and sent to the bishop, i.e the Bishop's Transcripts. The standard source for locating such copies is: J.S.W. Gibson, Bishops' Transcripts and Marriage Licences, Bonds and Allegations. (FFHS Publications).
D.Roles' England Parish Registers page includes an illustration of a baptism record.
Tithe payments, used to support the clergy, are fully explained on this National Archives page - Tithe Records.
G. Jaunay. A Parish Finder for England, published by Adelaide Proformat: South Plympton, Australia (2000) 468 p. Includes Ordnance Survey references for all English parishes, both ancient and modern, their diocese, deanery and county as at 1974, their date of creation and dedication, indicating for modern parishes the ancient parish(es) from which they were created, etc.
The Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCEd) is a collaborative project to create a relational database documenting the careers of all Church of England clergymen between 1540 and 1835.
Stan Mapstone once put online the list, as certified to the Registrar-General, of Denominations in England and Wales in 1867. Unfortunately these disappeared the closure of AOL's hometown pages, if anyone finds them online at another URL, please let me know using the report link below

UK and Ireland

UK & Ireland - Church Records - links and information.

Finding L.D.S. Batch Numbers

Batch numbers are used to identify the sources of records included on the I.G.I. (International Genealogical Index). Now that the L.D.S. (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) have provided online search facilities to this unparalleled resource, but without as yet providing means of limiting name searches to particular localities, batch numbers have become a valuable search aid because they can be used on the >Custom Search page to restrict searches to a particular parish. Unfortunately the L.D.S. have not provided an online index to batch numbers, and unofficial listings, while useful, are very far from complete and are not completely accurate. However, by following the steps below, it is possible to use the existing L.D.S. place search facility to determine batch numbers yourself:-

Please note: batch numbers for entries extracted from Scottish Civil Registration records (1855-1875) do not appear to be available online.

1	Go to the L.D.S. Place Search page.	You can also reach this page from the initial search page at http://www.familysearch.org - just select the "Custom" tab, then the "Family History Catalogue" link, and finally select "Place Search".
2	Enter the name of the parish or place in the Place Textbox and press the Search Button (or hit "Enter" on your keyboard").	You can limit the place search to a county or country by completing the optional "Part of" text box , but it is much safer to leave this blank and select from the resulting matches (step 3).
3	Select the appropriate location from the displayed list of place-name matches.	A "No Match" does not necessarily mean that the place or parish you are seeking is not included on the I.G.I. The indexes are apparently listed under "old" parish names only, and there are many places (e.g. villages and hamlets, which are not parishes and there are many parishes which are too modern to be included. In both cases indexes for your place/parish may well be included as a "title" within an "old" parish entry. For "places" you need to find which "old" parish included that place, and for modern parishes you need to identify its "mother parish". (Many GENUKI county pages now include gazetteers and/or church/parish indexes which may help identify the appropriate parish name to use.)
4	Select "... - Church Records -Indexes" from the list of available topics.	If this topic does not appear then unfortunately the parish is not included on the I.G.I. Please Note - the topic must be "Church Records - Indexes", NOT "Church Records".
5	Select the appropriate "Computer Printout" from the list of displayed titles.	The list of displayed titles may include non-conformist churches located within the parish and also "daughter" parishes of the parish you originally specified. Where no denomination is given, the church may be assumed to belong to the Church of England/Church of Scotland. The term "Computer Printout" seems rather inappropriate as it does not refer to a hard-copy, but to a set of electronic records in the L.D.S. database.
6	Note the Batch Numbers (in the first row of the "Notes" section).	If the term "Batch Number" does not appear, the selected records are not included on the I.G.I.
7	Produce a series of six digit numbers by combining each five digit number with each of the digits which follow the hyphen.	For example, 15565-1,2 would give you 155651 and 155652.
8	Where prefix letter(s) is/are specified, prefix each 6-digit number with those letters. The resulting "letter + 6-digit" strings are the batch numbers for the desired records. Otherwise, if no prefix is given, prefix each 6-digit number with M or E (for marriages), or P, C, I or J (for christenings). The resulting strings are potential batch numbers for the records in question and one or more of them will be valid.	In cases where the prefix is not specified, this step can only be a matter of trial and error - prefixes C, P and M are the most common prefixes and should be tried first, but E, I and J do occur quite regularly. Putative batch numbers can often be verified by making test searches using a very common surname. (Other prefix letters do exist but these relate to material submitted by L.D.S. members rather than to records resulting from the Church's record extraction programme.)

Search a batch at FamilySearch

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UK and Ireland: Church Records

General

Find a Church - a Directory of Christian Churches in the UK and Ireland, providing basic location and contact information, details of services, etc.
Free searches of parish and nonconformist registers are provided by FreeReg.
FamilySearch's page on IGI Batch Numbers for the British Isles and North America
Hugh Wallis provides a batch number search facility, which greatly simplifies the task of searching the I.G.I. for records from particular churches (useful, for example, in case of strangely-spelled names). A further batch number site is provided by Archer Software.
The LDS also supply additional church baptism and marriage records on their British Vital Records Index (2nd Edition) CD. A breakdown of the number of records included on the BVRI from each county and parish is provided on the Genoots website.(archived copy)
Glossary of terms related to church records, by Martyn Parsons.
The Official Non-Parochial BMD Records Service - a free index search facility for various unpublished registries from 1534 to 1865, from National Archives Refrences RG4 and RG5, with a pay-per-view access to the original records.
The National Archives provides a Research Guide on Nonconformists - advice on TNA's holdings

Lyon-Turner, G. Original Records of Early Nonconformity Under Persecution and Indulgence - 3 vols. T. Fisher Unwin, London (1911) [Online copies: Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3]

Anglican

Two major marriage licence indexing projects: the Faculty Office Marriage Licence Index (of licences issued by the Master of Faculties of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the period 1714 to 1850), and the Vicar-General Marriage Licence Index (of licences issued by the Vicar-General of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the period 1701 to 1850 undertaken by the SoG are now on www.findmypast.co.uk.

Free searches of parish registers are provided by FamilySearch.
Commercial register search sites include Ancestry, TheGenealogist, and www.findmypast.co.uk.
An article on clandestine marriages - by Jennifer M. Payne.

M.W. Foster. "A Comedy of Errors" or "The Marriage Records of England and Wales, 1837-1899", 19 Khouri Avenue, Wellington 6005, New Zealand, (1998) 223 p. [ISBN 0 473 05581 3]

Baptist

The Baptist Historical Society - general information.
The Catholic Archive Society website provides information about the Society and a full Catalogue of its publications.
The Catholic Central Library has moved to Durham University library.
Catholic Heritage - website of a project to provide a centralised access point to an online collection of Archive and Library catalogues within the Catholic Church

Breed, Geoffrey. My Ancestors were Baptists (4th ed.). Society of Genealogists (2002) 135 pp. [ISBN: 1903462525]
[". . . a history of the church plus valuable information on what records can be obtained. A complete listing of all Baptist churches and dates by county and appendices showing for instance the important collection in Dr Williams Library.."]

Congregationalists

Surnam Index Online - a biographical index to the names of 32,000 Congregational Ministers from the mid-seventeenth century to 1972, with "where known, their dates, details of their education, ministries or other employment", provided by the Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature in English.

Clifford, David J.H. My ancestors were Congregationalists in England and Wales: how can I find out more about them?, Society of Genealogists (1997) 77 pp. [ISBN: 0946789460]
["Following a useful introduction this book comprises a location list by county of Independent and Congregationalist registers to 1850. Many exist outside the Public Record Office. Details of chapels where no registers have been located are also included."]

Huguenot

Randolph Vigne. Huguenot Family Research Made Easier, Genealogist's Magazine 27, 10 (June 2003) pp. 447-449.

Inghamites

Oates, P.J. My Ancestors Were Inghamites, Society of Genealogists (2003) 149 pp. [ISBN 1 903462 77 0]
["Includes a brief history of the Inghamites, sections on chapels and their records, index of people referred to in the conference books of the Inghamites Societies, various baptism and lists of members."]

Jewish

Joseph, Austen. My Ancestors were Jewish (3rd ed.), Society of Genealogists (2002) 60 pp. [ISBN: 1903462630]
["Covers the emancipation of Jews in Europe, marriage, death and burials, census, secular records, surname information, information on repositories, internet and more."]

Methodist

The Methodist Archives and Research Centre is located at John Rylands University Library of Manchester, and provides the page Researching Methodist History.
An Introduction to Methodist Records, by Richard Ratclife.
The Wesleyan Methodist Historic Roll, by Richard Ratclife.
Information about Wesleyan Methodist ministers 1847-9 supplied by Bob Bester.

Leary, William. My Ancestors were Methodists (3rd ed.), Society of Genealogists (1997) 116 pp. [ISBN: 1859514030]
["The main text [of this 3rd edition] has not changed but the appendixes detailing holdings in the SoG have been revised and updated thoroughly. The book explains the records of Methodism and what to expect from these records."]

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