Genealogy Chat

Hello again everyone I am stil quite new at all this research business, but am pleased to say that lately I have had some extraordinary luck and been able to trace two branches of my family back to 1795. This absoultely amazed me but it might not be so amazing to some of the more established people on these boards lol! Now i 'm past 1837, I guess visits to the records offices are in order - namely chester and Liverpool. What I'd like to find out are details of burials, baptisms and marriage which I guess come from parish records? Are these kind of things available in the records offices? What do I need to have with me to find such details, for instance do I need to know the name of a church someone was buried or baptised in? Can anyone give me any tips as to what to expect, what I should take, how I should prepare? I've a month off work now so looking to get some serious research in! Any help much appreciated, and apologies if i have repeated any other threads. Sarah

Hi Sarah, Firstly you will probably need to contact the records office concerned to check how the records you need are held and to book a reader. Some records are on microfiche and some are on microfilm, it varies from place to place. You ideally should know which church someone was baptised/buried in although if you know the town/village, it shouldn't take too long to check a couple of different churches and once you have found one member of a family, they tended to stick to the same church for the rest. You can usually check baptism marriage and burial registers. Pre-1837 these don't hold as much info as a proper certificate - for example you probably won't get the mother's maiden name on a baptism record. Marriage records will probably only tel you name and status of bride and groom, maybe occupation, whether they were 'of the parish' or not and the witnesses. Take change for the copier, you can usually take printouts of the parish records and also take a pencil - many records offices don't allow you to take pens in. Good luck Sam x

Google the county you want + records office and you will find the place has a website with info about opening hours, whether or not you need to book, what you need to take etc. Records offices vary enormously from Essex which is huge, to Cambridge which is tiny. Prioritise what you need to find out. You might also find there's a local history centre too, which might be worth visiting. nell

Before you go to the Records offices try the local libraries. The family/local history sections sometimes have copies of Parish registers on film, fiche, or bound copy. Local family history also have them