England Some Challenges of Nonconformist Research - International Institute

The original content for this article was contributed by The International Institute of Genealogical Studies in June 2012. It is an excerpt from their course English: Non-Anglican Church Records  by Dr. Penelope Christensen. The Institute offers over 200 comprehensive genealogy courses for a fee ($).

The Challenge Of Dissenter Research (cont.)

Birth and Baptism at different places

The census may say he was born at X but the nearest chapel of his parents’ choosing may have been at Y. The problem is how to prove that they are same person, and some ideas are:

• Happily many Non-Anglican registers give the mother’s maiden name.
• ŸOne can look at the sequence of children in the census and in the chapel register.
• ŸDearth of other candidates in the vicinity is a good item of negative proof.
• ŸAnother indication of religious affinity is preferable to tie in with the birth/baptismal entry.
• Marriages of sisters and family burials are probably in the local parish where he said he was born.

Anglican Church Used for Births

Since Non-Anglican registers were frequently not kept well or at all, such children of the middle class in particular, who would be more likely to need proof of age and parentage, were frequently baptized Anglican since a record would then be kept.

Few Non-Anglican Burial Grounds

Few denominations could afford or were allowed to have their own burial grounds, and many towns had only generic ‘Dissenters Grounds’. Large numbers were therefore buried in Anglican churchyards if there was no nearby private cemetery. There were not many of the latter and England has never had a custom of family burial grounds such as exist in North America; only a very few exist, mainly on private estates. There was often friction between Anglicans and others regarding burial. Firstly, nonconformists disagreed with the principal of consecrated ground. Secondly, everyone had the right of burial in their parish churchyard according to civil law but the Church of England’s policy was to allow only their own clergy to conduct the service and only for those baptized as Anglicans.

In 1880 this was rectified by Act of Parliament giving Nonconformist ministers the right to conduct services. However, entries were all entered in the (Anglican) parish registers but some had a separate nonconformists section, and others annotated entries as Dissenter. After 1880 the last column is the key to distinguishing Nonconformist entries; these either say Burial Laws Amendment Act or give the signature of the Nonconformist minister who conducted the service. Happily the large urban cemeteries created after 1853 frequently had specific areas for each denomination and it is always a good idea to ask in which of these a relative’s grave is situated.

Huge Burial Registers

There were few Non-Anglican burial grounds and some were extremely popular, particularly city ones such as:

• ŸBunhill Fields, London opened in 1665 and is estimated to have 120,000 burials. Surviving registers are dated 1713-1854 which spans 13 films starting at FS Library film 0595439. The importance of this burial ground for nonconformity is reflected in numerous books, including collections of biographies of those interred there by Jones, and Light which are also on film.
  

• ŸSpa Fields, Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion, Clerkenwell, Middlesex with tens of thousands of burials 1778-1849 on five films starting at FS Library film 0596965.
  

• ŸGibraltar Burying Ground, Bethnal Green 1793-1837 on FS Library films 1818030-2.
  

• ŸBallast Hill Cemetery, Newcastle may have opened as early as 1609, but surviving registers commence in 1792, see FS Library films 1886117-119, with M.I.s from 1707 on FS Library film 1068871.

Use of Anglican Church as Cover

To prevent persecution some dissenters deliberately used the Anglican church in addition to their own surreptitious services. They intentionally blend in with the general population in the parish registers. Thus the diligent researcher may find two baptisms for each child—one in the chapel and the other in the parish church. Today we should remember that provision of work was controlled by the more affluent members of the community (whose religious persuasion thus mattered), and such parish relief as was available came from the Church of England. It paid to at least appear to subscribe to their views.

Religious Mobility

Many people switched from one denomination to another in the course of a lifetime, for different reasons including:

• ŸDoctrinal or liturgical disagreement.
  

• ŸChanging views on who should hold authority in the church—whether the monarch, state, bishops, ministers, congregations or even individuals.
  

• ŸProximity of home to specific churches or chapel.
  

• ŸInfluence of oratorical and spiritual qualities of a specific minister i.e. moving with the vicar.
  

• ŸInterdenominational marriage.
  

• ŸMissionary conversion.
  

• ŸState legal requirements, for example:

• Entrance to university.
• Professional work—Test Act.
• Legal marriage 1754-1837.

• ŸDestitution.
  

• ŸEmployment.

Most Nonconformists were middle class and typically tradesmen having their own small business, and therefore not beholden unto anyone. Very few urban working class were regular church attendees, but relied on the Anglican parish for baptism, marriage and burial as well as poor relief, thus many needed to stay in the good graces of the local Anglican minister to survive. Nonconformists placed more emphasis on personal devotions which required literacy and was thus a barrier to the illiterate poor. At the other end of the scale the reason there were few upper class nonconformists was that it had an equalizing effect on participants, and would have reduced their influence in society.

Gandy (Basic facts about English Nonconformity for Family Historians. Federation of Family History Societies, 1998) has pointed out that many of our ancestors had no specific loyalty to one denomination, but went to the nearest one that seemed to more-or-less fit their set of beliefs. Some went purely for social reasons, and would ‘graduate’ up the perceived scale from Baptist or Primitive Methodist to the Methodist, then to the Anglican church as they gained a little money or social pretension. Some sent their children to Sunday School so they could get a couple of hours peace and quiet or privacy— crowded urban tenements offered little enough of these. It is therefore most important to put your ancestor’s church- or chapel-going into historical as well as geographical context.

Very few families did not try out one or other of these other denominations at some time or other, thus an occasional christening or burial may be found in their registers, collectively referred to as the non-parochial registers. A change in religious preference is important to remember when the trail goes cold in one denomination—was there a meeting place nearby of another denomination? Doctrinal differences between groups were sometimes slight and thus people could be baptized in one, married in another and buried by a third. As an added complication, churches and chapels sometimes changed loyalties as well.

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