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 free 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. 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 may be 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.