Cornwall Compiled Genealogies: Difference between revisions

Another invaluable resource is provided by the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks. This is a volunteer organization that has a large database of baptisms (christenings), marriages, banns, and burials with excellent coverage of a number of parishes. There are also online clerks for nearly all of the more than 200 parishes, who on a free and voluntary basis will respond to questions, and many will do lookups in databases to which they have access. Some of them maintain their own website with extensive databases of these events that can be freely accessed. Their database also has information which has been submitted from birth, marriage, and death certificates that individuals have obtained from the Government Record Office. There is also an ongoing associated project with transcriptions from historic newspapers (The West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser) of the 19th century.  The website has a link to the searchable archives of the papers that have been transcribed.  The home page of the OPC site has more details about their services and is accessed at [http://www.cornwall-opc.org/ http://www.cornwall-opc.org/]  The searchable database may be accessed directly at [http://www.cornwall-opc-database.org/ http://www.cornwall-opc-database.org/] and is free to anyone.  

Many parish records have been extracted by the LDS Church and are found in the IGI. The Hugh Wallis index of IGI batch numbers, which also gives the coverage in Cornwall by parish and years, is found at [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers/CountyCornwall.htm http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers/CountyCornwall.htm]   A map of Cornish parishes can be found online at [http://www.cornwalleng.com/parishmap3.gif http://www.cornwalleng.com/parishmap3.gif]  When parish records are not available or have been lost, that information may sometimes be found in the bishops transcripts.   Despite the fact that the Church of England (Anglican) is the established church in Cornwall, a major part of the population turned to Methodism and other smaller groups (of which the Bible Christian Movement was the largest).  By the mid 19th century there were more Methodists than Anglicans in Cornwall, which must be remembered by all researchers, as a search of only the Church of England parish records would miss information for more than half the population during the 19th century.  Methodism was especially dominant in the mining districts of Western Cornwall.  However, until at least 1837, nearly all marriages were in the Anglican Churches, even among the Methodists.  One must also know that burial of many Methodists continued to take place in the Anglican Church cemeteries.  

In addition to the large databases which can be accessed on the usual commercial sites, such as Ancestry.com or FindMyPast.co.uk, there are excellent searchable databases available without cost. The most accurate census transcriptions (because they were done by Cornish people familiar with the names and places) are found at the Cornwall Online Census Project at [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kayhin/ukocp.html http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kayhin/ukocp.html]. The UK Census Online (FreeCEN), while not uniquely Cornish, is also valuable and will often yield positive results when other sites providing the census fail to find the person sought, because the search function allows a phonetic search of surnames. This is found at [http://www.freecen.org.uk/ http://www.freecen.org.uk/]. The civil registration indexes are also available, as part of all those for England and Wales at [http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ http://www.freebmd.org.uk/]. Not all entries after 1915 on most sites have been indexed for searchability, but the indexing and search capability for the BMD's from 1837-2005 has been completed on Ancestry.com.  

A devastating collapse of the economy in Cornwall during the 19th century resulted in a massive exodus of much of the population (referred to as the Cornish Diaspora), and it was not until 1971 that the population of Cornwall returned to that (about 350,000) of the mid-19th century. It is estimated that there are approximately six million people worldwide with Cornish ancestry, and fewer than 10% now live in Cornwall. Inasmuch as the most important segment of the economy had been mining, those who are seeking to find families who left Cornwall are most likely to have success when searching in places where mining was important. In the USA, the Cornish are found in large numbers in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and California, but are everywhere throughout the country. In Canada, Ontario was the most common destination, and many went to South Africa, as well as mining districts in Latin America, such as the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. Massive emigration to Australia, especially South Australia, and New Zealand took place, and Moonta, South Australia is still known as "Little Cornwall." In many of the countries to which the Cornish people have emigrated, there are Cornish societies or organizations which may also be a source of help in genealogical research.

 

 

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