Lancashire Church Records: Difference between revisions

}}Before 1837 church records are the main source for genealogical research in Lancashire. They typically record baptisms, marriages and burials. After 1837 they were superseded by [[England Civil Registration|Civil Registration]]. However they remain useful post-1837 for determining which religions your ancestors belonged to and due to the costs for accessing civil registration records.

== Church of England ==

[[Image:Early morning view across the Lune valley, from near Crook of Lune - geograph.org.uk - 632931.jpg|right|350x250px|thumb|<center>Early morning view across the Lune valley, from near Crook of Lune<center>]]

Lancashire was comprised of&nbsp;at least 75 ancient parishes, but well over 400&nbsp;extant chapels&nbsp;(chapelries) and district churches&nbsp;prior to 1851. It is very important to note that each parish had many chapels with their own registers. On average each parish had 8, but Manchester had about 160!  

*[http://familysearch.org FamilySearch] has transcribed over 21 million parish records and cemetery records from Lancashire entries; see these collections of records: [[England, Lancashire, Oldham Cemetery Registers (FamilySearch Historical Records)|Oldham Cemetery Registers]], [[England, Lancashire, Parish Registers (FamilySearch Historical Records)|Lancashire Parish Registers]] and [[England, Manchester, Parish Registers (FamilySearch Historical Records)|Manchester Parish Registers]]  

*[http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/Search/indexp.html Lancashire Online Parish Clerks (OPCs)] . Indexes and transcripts only, no images. This site has transcribed over 9.3 million baptism, marriage, burial and banns entries for the county as of April 2018 . Search&nbsp;by parish or the whole county  

*[http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LAN/lprs/ Lancashire Parish Register Society] transcribes and publishes parish registers for pre-1837 Lancashire. Their published books may be accessed at local public and college libraries and archive institutions worldwide.  

*Ancestry ($) has indexes (12.6 million) and images of the nearly all Lancashire Church of England parish records; These are found in many sometimes overlapping collections, arranged by location (Manchester Cathedral, Manchester, Lancashire) and date. For example, [http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2960 Manchester, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1915]  

*FindMyPast has records for Manchester (2.6 million).