Genealogy Chat

.....on researching pre civil reg ancestors in the UK from overseas!

I now live in San Fransisco although I’m originally from Cheshire so do have a basic working knowledge of English geography. My main stumbling block is that a lot of my ancestors seem to have been born, raised and died in areas where coverage on NBI, IGI and BVRI are practically non-existent and now I’m into the murky waters of pre 1837, I’m drowning! For obvious reasons I can’t get to the appropriate RO’s and a couple of recent requests for lookups have been greeted with rather blunt ‘There’s far too many churches to check, you need to narrow it down’ and ‘Can you be more specific?’ And that’s my problem. How exactly? If someone says, for example, that they were born in X in 1810, how do you begin to start ascertaining where in X and which church? Has anyone got any useful websites they can share or any brainwaves on how to approach this? I believe we have an LDS centre here in SF although at the moment I don’t know where and have never used it but again, would I need to know which church? Any tips on using on of these centres would also be fantastic Thanks Maddie

Have you tried IGI England Hugh Wallis. I found it helpful as it list all the churches in the area and you just type in the name . Sue

Forgive my ignorance but I thought that the Hugh Wallis site merely listed the churches in the areas with the appropriate batch number to search under. If the areas/churches I need haven't been filmed and included on the LDS site, how would the Hugh Wallis site help? Or is there more information on there than on the LDS site?

Genuki's website gives detailed information on parishes. Parish locator is freely downloadable and that gives a plot on parishes, with distances between them. If you type old maps in the search box on GR, that gives lots of advice on websites of maps. Books that are useful are Phillimore's Atlas and the National Index of Parish Registers. The later are VERY detailed, listing registers, BTs, MIs etc and where copies may be found. (Although this latter relates to the UK, it may be an indication that LDS libraries can also obtain copies.) For the future, the Mormorns are undertaking a project to map England (and presumably Wales etc). When finished, you will get overlays of parishes, deaneries, hundreds etc so that those without a knowledge of English geography can access and understand records more easily. They have made a start on East Anglia, but goodness knows when this will be available.