Prior to 1837 there were no central records of citizens kept by the government. The only comparable records to the later registration of births, marriages and deaths are the parish registers which were kept by each local Anglican Church and into which the vicar recorded every baptism, marriage and burial performed in the church. The earliest registers date from 1538 although substantive record keeping was often not begun until the seventeenth century.

Parish registers are one of the most useful sources to use to trace your family history, as well as revealing people often marginalised in historical sources. For example we see:

“Maria Mandula “Advena et aethiops” Stranger and aethiops.  Burial 1586, Calne St Mary parish register”

“Elizabeth the Blackmoor lived at the White Hart, buried 26 Jan 1653. Salisbury St Thomas parish register”

 Although we have very useful indexed transcripts here (created by the Wiltshire Family History Society and covering baptisms and burials up to 1837), and microfiche copies of the original registers for perusal, it becomes a very time consuming process to look for ancestors if you do not have an idea of which parish they lived in. Bit of an ancestor needle in a parish haystack!

However, we are excited to announce that staff from Ancestry are currently undertaking the digitisation of the baptism, marriage and burial registers held here. These will then be available to view online at Ancestry, and searchable by name, location and date. There are thousands of volumes to digitise, but the team are now well over 25% complete! ‘Don’t count your ancestors before they are indexed’ though – it will be some time before all the digitisation, and subsequent indexing and transcription is complete. An exciting prospect for the future!