Genealogy in the Sun 2014 Else Churchill Beyond Parish Registers. Name Rich Sources for the Long 18th Century

1. Genealogy in the Sun 2014
Pre 1841 Name Rich Sources
for the “long 18th Century”
1688-1837
Else Churchill
www.sog.org.uk

2. Lists
• Census substitutes
• Name rich resources
• Lists of people used by genealogists, demographers, social & local
historians, psephologists (study of elections) and other academics
that include information on name, age, occupations & relationships
» Not necessarily all together 
• Listed by Chapman and Gibson but others may crop up
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Colin Chapman Pre 1841 Census and Population Listings in
the British Isles, 1998
• Jeremy Gibson and Mervyn Medlycott Local Census Listings
1522-1930 Holdings in the British Isles, Federation of
Family History Societies, 1997.
– also a list online from Essex university
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~alan/family/N-
EarlyCensuses.html

3. • Fragmentary nominal householders’ lists
found locally in ROs and Libraries
• Ad hoc lists created for local needs
• May not survive for every parish
• Often only include certain sections of the
community, middle and upper class or
poor

4. How big? How Many?
• Gregory King et all
debating size of population
since late 17th Century
• War with France
• 1753 Bill proposing annual
enumeration of the poor
and ecclesiastical
registration of vital events
• 1st census USA 1790
• Malthus Essay on principle
of population, 1798

5. 1800 Census Act
• Act for taking into account the Population
of Great Britain, and the increase or
diminunation thereof”
– Enumeration of population
– Obtain data from baptisms, marriages and
burials for the whole of the 18th Century
– How many working in agriculture or trade,
manufacture and handicrafts?
» Administered for the Home Office by John
Rickman1801-1831 and enacted by Clergy and
overseers of the poor who along with other
substantial householders were responsible for
making house to house enumerations on March 10
1801 and every 10 years from then on.

6. 1801 census questions
• How many inhabited and uninhabited
houses?
• How many persons, males and females,
exclusive of men in regular forces or
militia, seamen or on registered vessels?
• How many working in agriculture or trade,
manufacture and handicrafts or neither
• What number of C&B in 1700, 1710, 1720
-1801 etc?
• What number of marriages 1754-1800?
• Any explanations?

7. Approx 800 returns in local record
offices and libraries
• Fragmentary nominal householders lists
compiled by clergy etc
• content can vary – some quite detailed
• Often in parish registers or parish papers
• Overseers accounts
• Churchwardens accounts
– Listed by Chapman and Gibson and also a list
online from Essex university
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~alan/family/N
-EarlyCensuses.html

8. Dartford 1801
• The information given in the 1801 book is particularly informative. The listing is
arranged by location, e.g. 'High Street', then 'Overy Liberty' etc. For each family full
names are given, including those of servants. Relationships are indicated either as
'wife', or for children can be read from the column headed 'Issue'. Occupations are
identified, but only as three broad classes as required by the government: these are
'Agriculture', 'Trade etc', or '3rd class' (those not in the other two).
• Total number of double-page spreads: 53; total population named and enumerated:
2,406.

9. Note extra remarks include occupations within the households, value of rent paid and
the number of windows and dogs in each household!

10. Search SoGCAT
census AND 1831 etc

12. Census reports
Essex University Histpop.org.

13. 1811 census report comments on
deficiencies of registers

14. 1831 parish register abstract
the source of what we know about PRs

15. 1831 census parish register abstract used to compile
Phillimore Atlas & Index of Paris Registers

16. Problems with Parish Registers
Baptisms
Marriages
Burials
From 1538 in England & Wales
From c 1660 in Scotland
Originals in local county record offices
Copies and indexes at Society of
Genealogists
Some online, on FamilySearch etc.

17. Registration Acts of William III
for carrying on the War against France with vigour
“designed to help the exchequer”
• 1694-1706
graduated scale of duties on
marriages, births and burials (and tax
on bachelors & widowers for 5 years)
tax collectors allowed full access to
registers and £100 penalty on
ministers who neglected to register
assessors presented lists of all persons
with the sums they would be liable to
pay in the event of birth, burial or
marriage.

18. 1696 Inhabitants of Bristol
Bristol RS 25
based on Marriage Duty assessments 1695-1706
• Taxed burials, births, marriages,
bachelors aged 25 and over and
childless widowers. Imposed sliding
scale of charges on all.
• Bur 4sh
• Mar 2sh
• Births 2sh
• Bachelors and widowers paid a shilling
a year
• Enforced 1695 for 5 years and
extended to 1st August 1706
Bristol has 81 surviving assessments
for its 17 parishes in this period with a
complete set for the year 1696
London has lots with a published
index by London Record Society as
Inhabitants of London 1695 (within
the Walls) online on
www.british-history.ac.uk

19. London Inhabitants Outside the Walls 1695
London Record Society (vol. 45, edited by Patrick Wallis.2011)
BIDDLE :-
• Elizabeth a servant in St Giles Cripplegate
• James, his wife Mary, his son Isaac and
daughter Mary in St Bride
• Joseph, his wife Anne and his niece Sara
Briteridge in St Giles Cripplegate
• Robert and his wife Elizabeth in St Giles
Cripplegate
• Thomas, his wife Mary, his son John and
his daughter Elizabeth in St Giles
Cripplegate

20. Results of Marriage duties
• Rise in number of paupers
• Fall in number of entries in registers
• Rise in number of peculiars, extra
parochial or non parochial churches.
• Unbeneficed clergy performing
marriages
• Ministers in prisons engaged in
unlicenced matrimonial business

21. Growth and Acceptance of
Nonconformity
• Move to accept Quakers and Jewish
Marriage records from 1754 but
others still had to marry in CoE
• Roman Catholic Emancipation 1832
• Moves towards Civil Registration
• Dissenting registries of ZMD
College of Arms,
Doctor Williams’s Library & Paternoster Row
on BMD registers website

22. Returns of Papists 1767
At Parliamentary Archives
Roman Catholic Returns
1680, 1706, 1767, 1781
(HL/PO/JO/10) – The names of known or
reputed Roman Catholics are listed for
1680 and 1706, but some may be
suppressed for 1767 or not collected for
1781. For details see the National Index
of Parish Registers, vol. 3 (1974),
Historical Manuscripts Commission,
Eleventh Report, Appendix, part 2, and E.
S. Worrall, Returns of Papists, 1767:
dioceses of England and Wales except
Chester (Catholic Record Society,
1989).
Durham examples

23. Surviving non parochial records collected in 1841 & 1857 and now held at TNA
Online on BMD Registers

24. Newspapers
• British Library British Newspaper
Archives
• Times on Line
24

25. 25
Search by place - Whitstable

26. Daily Courant appeared in 1702 but several
provincial towns had weekly papers dating earlier
than this. The Norwich Post (later the Gazette) was
first published in 1701. Berrow’s Worcester Journal
began as the Worcester Post in 1690 and the
Stamford Mercury dates from 1695. Birmingham
has papers dating back to 1741, Canterbury to
1729, Chelmsford to 1764, Carmarthen to 1770,
Chester to 1739, Colchester to 1736, Exeter
to1711, Ipswich to 1720, Kingston upon Hull to
1746, Leeds to 1720, Leicester to 1775, Lincoln and
Liverpool to1712
26

27. 27
Gloucester Journal 1830

28. Burney Collection
• The newspapers and news pamphlets
gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney
1757-1817 are the largest single collection of
17th and 18th century English news media
available from the British Library. The 700 or
so bound volumes of newspapers and
pamphlets were mainly published in London.
However there are also some provincial
papers included within the 127 titles in the
collection. It is surprising how many
obituaries or biographical entries for people
outside London can be found in some of the
London papers included in the collection such
as the Morning Chronicle or London Evening
Post. The collection is available free to UK
Higher and Further Education institutions and
can be searched by name and place in the
Connected Histories website although its
optical character recognition does render
some names and places rather peculiarly as
can be seen in the screen shot from the
Connected Histories site below.
http://www.connectedhistories.org/resource.
aspx?sr=bu
28

29. • Some smaller local
newspapers, although not
digitized with images, do
have online indexes. Bath
and North East Somerset
Council has indexed copies
of the Bath Chronicle held
at the Bath Record Office
from 1770-1800 with
abstracts. You can search
the index at
http://www.bathnes.gov.u
k/leisureandculture/record
sarchives/georgian
29

30. Gentleman’s Magazine
• Gentleman's Magazine started in 1731, a Britain-
focused miscellany of information about people,
places and events, including news summaries,
parliamentary reports, biographies, birth, marriage,
death and obituary notices, poems, essays, and a
register of current publications.
• The Gentleman’s Magazine has been partly digitised
and indexed through the world wide web and many
volumes can be found through Google Books and the
Internet Archive but there are gaps in the runs
available on various sites. The best links to finding
text of this magazine is
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id
=gentlemans
• Local extracts from the Gentlemans’s Magazine were
edited and published as 15 or so volumes called the
Gentleman’s Magazine Library. Arranged by regional
and/or county volumes the Library volumes do not
include all the obituaries and names from births
marriages and deaths mentioned in each magazine.
The GM Library volumes have been digitized widely
including on Ancestry. However its OCR does not
always enable a reader to establish the context of the
entry of a name that is found and the browsing
functionality for each volume is very poor.
• There are cumulative subject indexes for the period
1731-1818 at various places online. The College of
Arms holds a 75 volume index to names appearing in
the magazine which was typed up by the Genealogical
Society of Utah. This has been microfilmed and
microfiched and should therefore be available through
your local LDS family history centre. You can find
information about this on the Family History Library
Catalogue available through www.familysearch.org.
30

31. Musgrave’s Obituaries
MUSGRAVE’S OBITUARIES.
A very useful source for obituaries for this period is a series
of volumes known as Musgrave’s Obituaries published by
the Harleian Society (Harleian Society Volumes 44-49) – or
to give it its full tile Obituary prior to 1800 (as far as
relates to England, Scotland, and Ireland) as compiled by
Sir William Musgrave 6th Bart of Hayton Castle and entitled
by him “A General Nomenclature and Obituary” with
reference to the books where the persons are mentioned
and where some account of their character is to be found
edited by Sir George J Armitage Bart FSA.
Based on a manuscript compiled by Musgrave now held at
the British Library these printed volumes are full of
obituary notices published before 1800. Many are taken
from journals and magazines of the period particularly The
Annual Register, the European Magazine and London
Review, the Gentleman’s Magazine and published
biographies of the period. Musgrave’s Obituaries has been
largely digitized on various sites. A full text version appears
on the Internet Archive.
http://www.archive.org/stream/obituarypriorto01socigoog/
obituarypriorto01socigoog_djvu.txt
Finding the magazine that contains the original obituary
can be difficult. The Society of Genealogists has some of
the sources cited but it can mean “trawling the Internet” or
good reference libraries for others.
31

32. Local Directories
• Lists of people
“flourishing” in a certain
time and place
• 18th-20th Century
• County and Large Cities
• Large collection at
Guildhall, SoG (both
have plans to digitise)
• Several publishers
– Kelly/Post Office, Piggot &
Co

33. Every man in his place

34. Search Directories on line
www.historicaldirectories.org

35. Poll Books
• Act of 1696
introduced
published poll
books designed to
prevent fraud
showing how
electors had voted.
Returning officers
allowed printers to
publish poll books
commercially
The Poll for the Knights of the Shire to represent the county of Leicestershire 1775

37. Many poll books digitised
follow county/voting registers links on GENUKI
Also Essex University History Data Service. Local archives, CDs etc.
SoG Data online includes PDFs of SoG holdings
Norfolk voting registers

38. Borough Freemen
• Apprenticeship
• Matrimony
• Patrimony
• Redemption
• Bristol, Canterbury,
Coventry, York etc
Canterbury Freemen

39. Freeholders/Jurors
• A property qualification for jurors was first established
in 1225. From 1692 jurors had to possess land in
freehold, copyhold or life tenure worth at least £10 per
year and from 1730 qualification extended to include
long term lease holders. From 1696 Constables required
to return and certify at the first Quarter Session after
Michelmas a list of persons between 21 and 70 qualified
to serve with names, rank, occupation and sometimes
house or street.
• From 1825 jury service restricted to men 21-70 with
freehold property worth £10 or leasehold worth £20or
householders with houses worth £30 per annum and in
Middlesex assess for the duty on inhabited houses or, in
other places, for the poor rate
• Lists of qualified jurors made by parish overseers of the
poor and certified by 2 justices sent to Clerk of the
Peace to be copied into the jurors book.
• Search CRO catalogues – Many QS records catalogues
into Access to Archives or A2A

40. Middlesex Free holders
LMA film X66/1-7
cat ref MR/F/B 001-14
Oussulton Hundred - Tower Dvn

42. Inhabitants of Ardleigh …1796
“In consequence of the avowed intention of the French to make descent upon this coast … I have thought it my duty to number my
parishioners; which I have done by domiciliary visitation…” see Ardleigh in 1796 its farms, families and local government” by F H Erith ,
ES/L 71.
See Ardleigh One Place Study and cf 1811 &
1821 censuses, directories etc.

43. Census Substitutes
• Lists of Names
– Church & Parish
• Marriage duty assessments on births, marriages and
burials 1695-1706
• Nonconformists and Papists
• Loyal Protestants
• Tithes
• Communicants & Easter Books
• Provision for parish poor particularly after
introduction of the “Speenhamland system”
introduced in 1796 as outdoor poor relief provided
according to size of families

44. Militia Lists from 1757 – adult males
• Militia Ballot Lists
1757-1831
– 1757-175:NAMES & INFIRMITITES
– 1758-1802: NAMES, OCCUPATIONS & INFIRMITIES
– 1802-1806: NAMES, DESCRIPTIONS,INFIRMITIES,
No of CHILDREN OVER & UNDER 14, (and in
household forms ages)
– 1806-1831: NAMES, DESCRIPTIONS,INFIRMITIES,
No of CHILDREN OVER & UNDER 14,
• Defence Lists
(Posse Comitatus)
1798 &1803-4
• Musters 1781-82
[WO/13]

45. Wing – One Place Study
includes Posse Cometatus, poll books and land tax

46. Taxation records
• Local Parish Rates or Assessments
• Land tax 1780-1820 (few from 1698)
• Window tax from 1697-1851
• Stamp Duties from 1695 e.g. lawyers articles of
clerkship 1730-1838 (TNA CP5), Apprentices 1710-1811 ( TNA IR1)
• Assesses tax payers paying tax on
– Coaches, Silver plate, Male Servants
David Garrick paid £6 in tax for the year 5 April
1756 on his four wheeled chariot and two
wheeled chase (TNA T47/2)
See Jeremy Gibson Land and Window Tax
Assessments

47. Window Tax – a tax on air!
Given the unpopularity of a tax which allowed inspectors to
come your home to count the number of hearths a new tax
was introduced in 1696 which cunningly was not an
intrusion because you could assess the number of windows
from the outside. Initially the window tax was more
successful than hearth tax but people became skilled at
avoiding tax by blocking up windows. A version of the
window tax went on until 1851 although collection was not
strictly enforced at the end of its life. To start off all
occupiers paid 2 shillings with householders having
between 10-20 windows paying 8 shillings. The dues were
tinkered with over the period as people got better at
blocking windows. Like the hearth tax the window tax was
inefficient and didn’t raise the expected revenues. Protests
were made against this tax on light and air. Window tax
records can be found locally.

48. East Sussex Window Tax 1747

49. Land Tax
• Introduced in the seventeenth century (1693)
and only finally abolished in the mid twentieth
century the records are of most use for the
period 1780-1832 (before and after this date
returns are fragmentary). For this period the
records doubled as “electoral registers” of those
who were entitled to vote and are stored in the
quarter session records at county record offices.
Returns for the tax in 1798 were copied by the
Inland Revenue and hence returns for this year
for the whole country can be found at the
National Archives (IR 23). Many returns for the
counties have been published by local history or
family history societies. See the Gibson Guide
Land and Window Tax Assessments 1691-1950.

52. Land Tax exemptions @TNA
• IR 23 a snapshot of Land Tax payers in
the year 1798-99 which lists all owners of
property subject to land tax in England
and Wales when the tax became a fixed
annual charge and many people
purchased exemptions.
• IR 22 contains what are called the Parish
Books of Redemptions 1799-1954
• IR 24 contains Registers of Redemptions
Certificates 1799-1963. Both are partially
indexed

53. Land Tax 1780-1832
Land Tax Assessment Redemption
Contracts for the parish of St Ives
1799-1805 taken from Cornish
Land Tax Assessments in Cornwall
County Record Office AD 103/228-
229 [microfilm copy at Society of
Genealogists MF 1564].
The land tax was first regularly
imposed in 1693 but is most
useful from the period after 1780
when duplicates of the returns
were lodged with the Clerk of the
Peace at Quarter Sessions so they
could be used to establish the
residential and landowning
qualifications to vote at
Parliamentary elections and hence
it is only for this period that there
is any uniformity in the records’
survival. The original assessments
for Cornwall have not survived so
these redemption contracts are of
unique importance.

54. Local Lists - Parish examples at SoG from “parish chest”

55. Parish Poor Rates and Assessments
• Overseers of the Poor empowered to raise
assessments or rates in order to meet
demands of poor relief. Had to submit
accounts to the vestry. System started in
reign of Q Elizth and continued beyond Poor
Law amendment Act of 1834 (though
reformed in 1836 to provide accompanying
maps assessing properties and set annual
rateable values) but was not abolished until
1927

56. Parish Assessments
who’s liable for the Poor Pate
Deal 1821

57. Parish Highway Rates
• From 1555 parishes were obliged to
appoint a surveyor of the highways
for each parish or township who was
empowered to collect local rates and
submit accounts. He supervised local
labour to maintain their roads.

60. Local Lists

61. Bradford on Avon

62. www.one-place-studies.org

63. Using some of the sources for the parish of Wing we can
devise timelines for men called William Heley :-
• Heley William (maltster and corn dealer, farmer & grazier)
appears in directories from 1830-1877
• William Heley is included in the 1830 Poll for the Knight of the
Shire
• William Heley is noted in the Land Tax for 1830, 1820
• William Heley senior and Junior are noted in the Land Tax for
1810
• 2 men called William Heley appear in the Posse Comitatus of
1798
• William Heley appears in the 1784 poll book (probably William
Senior?)
• A William Haley appears in the 1722 poll book –
– Unfortunately the registers for the parish are defective for the years
1753-1769. We would need to compare the above entries with
surviving parish registers (especially later burials), Victorian
censuses and wills to see if there are in fact 3 generations of
William Heley in this parish between1722-1877 or is the run of
generations filled by one of the other Heleys in the parish?

64. Stamp Duties & Assessed Taxes
• Stamp Duties from 1695 e.g. lawyers articles of clerkship 1730-
1838 (TNA CP5), Apprentices 1710-1811 ( TNA IR1)
• Silver plate 1756-77 (TNA T/47/5-7)
• Playing cards and dice (TNA T/47/2-4)
• Employment of male servants 1777-1852 (TNA T/47/8)
• Employment of female servants 1785-92
• Gamekeepers 1784-1807
• Horses 1784-1884
• Coats of arms 1793-1892
• Hair Powder 1785-8
• Dogs 1796-1882
• Clocks and Watches 1797-8

65. Garrick Family paying duties
Tax on employing male servants indexed at SoG 1780
lists numbers but not names of servants
Duty on coaches, Berlins, chariots,
laundaus, etc

66. Garrick Pedigree by Stella Colwell
Family Roots, Discovering the Past in the PRO, 1991

67. www.oldbaileyonline.org
1674-1834

68. www.connectedhistories.org.

69. 69
Civil Litigation
Chancery – Bernau Index

70. 70
How to use the Bernau index

71. 71
Bernau index: eg. from
correspondence notebooks

72. 72
TNA Trafalgar database

73. 73
Militia Lists from 1757
• Militia Ballot Lists
1757-1831
– 1757-1758:NAMES & INFIRMITITES
– 1758-1802: NAMES, OCCUPATIONS & INFIRMITIES
– 1802-1806: NAMES, DESCRIPTIONS,INFIRMITIES,
No of CHILDREN OVER & UNDER 14, (and in
household forms ages)
– 1806-1831: NAMES, DESCRIPTIONS,INFIRMITIES,
No of CHILDREN OVER & UNDER 14,
• Defence Lists
1798 &1803-4
• Musters 1781-82
[WO/13]
• WO 96 Militia on
FMP

74. 74
Trinity House Petitions
Merchant seamen & their families 1780-1890

75. SoG/Findmypast
• 1831 census project
• Plans to digitise SoG holdings of directories,
poll-books, almanacs and other lists that will
complement the fragmentary 1831 census
• Any volunteers?
» See Librarian