By now your searches in census records will have supplied you with the parish and county in which your earliest known ancestor, at this point, was born. To trace a record of their baptism and those of any siblings and their parents marriage you will have to examine the appropriate original Anglican parish register. Nearly all original parish registers are now housed at County Record Offices. Those for the City of London are housed at the Guildhall Mss Department and those for the Greater London area at the Metropolitan Archives in Islington. Generally speaking all Anglican parish registers begin in 1538 but some begin much later, you will have to check the holdings of the Record Office in order to ascertain when the registers you are interested in began. The information they give can vary enormously; the registers of many of the City of London parishes will provide quite detailed entries. However some will only provide only the briefest of information. For example, the majority of burial registers for the sixteenth, seventeenth and parts of the eighteenth centuries will not give an age at death and/or occupation. Many marriage registers for those centuries will only give the names of the bride and groom. The same applies to baptismal registers, most just give the date, name of the child and parents names. To obtain details of their trade and or occupations and other information you will have to carry out searches in ancillary sources, such as marriage bonds and allegations, banns registers, wills and administrations plus monumental inscriptions.

Most of the registers will end in 1858 but some may continue much later. If that is not the case with the parish in which you are interested then you should approach the local minister and ask for permission to search the registers post 1858. The name and address and telephone number of the local minister can be obtained from the current edition of Crockford’s Clerical Directory.

If you are unable to trace the baptism of your ancestor in the Anglican registers, you should then search the Non-Conformist registers that cover that parish. These are held by the Public Record Office at Kew and in most cases end in 1837. In the event that your ancestor was a Quaker then you must consult the registers of Quarterly and Monthly Meetings held at Friends House Library, Euston Rd, London. If they were Roman Catholics you should consult the registers held at the Public Record Office. However, most catholic registers are still held in local custody, in which case you should consult current edition of The Catholic Directory for the name address and telephone number of the present priest.

The format used in parish registers post 1812 differs greatly from those prior to that date. After 1812 it is much easier to read the information contained therein. However, before 1812 the format is much more haphazard and in many cases difficult to read. For example post 1812 baptism, marriages and burials are all listed separately but prior to that many are all mixed up in a general register. In theory all parish registers should begin in 1538, however many begin at a much later date. In order to overcome this difficulty you should determine if there are any surviving bishops or archdeacon’s transcripts; they will be held at the local record office. If the register does not give and age at death, then determine if the monumental inscriptions in the church and churchyard have been transcribed. Your ancestor’s immediate family may have raised an inscription to their memory on which the age at death is given. The Society of Genealogists in London have many such transcriptions for England & Wales.

Helpful Hints Initially you should search the period 1750 to 1858 and list all references to the surname you are interested in. This way you will be able to produce a pedigree chart which lists all the known relatives of your ancestor. In the event that you find more than more baptism entry for a person with the same name as your ancestor, search the burial registers to see if one has died an infant. If this proves successful then you can confidently accept the remaining entry as relating to your ancestor. If you do not find an entry for your ancestor, try searching any Non-Conformist/Catholic/Quaker registers that may have survived for that parish. If that is also unsuccessful, determine if there is a baptismal index for the county and have it searched. Burial Indexes for individual counties are also available. If you cannot find a burial for your ancestor in the parish in which he was born and or married, try searches in the aforementioned.

Most marriages took place after the calling of banns but some may have been by licence. If the register has recorded the fact then you should consult the indexes to surviving bonds and allegations for the diocese in which your ancestor lived; they are usually held in the local Record Office. Even if there is no indication in the register that it was by licence you should still check the indexes especially for entries that only give the date and names of the bride and groom. Much useful additional information can be obtained by this means. Many marriages also took place in the bride’s parish in which case you will have to search the appropriate marriage index for the county where your ancestor lived. A great many of these marriages indexes are held privately and they do not always cover the whole of the county. Fortunately there is a very good guide to their location viz: Marriage, Census and other Indexes for Family Historians, by Jeremy Gibson. These can also be supplemented by using Percival Boyd’s Index of Marriages for England & Wales 1537-1837 and The Pallot Marriage Index for London 1800-1837.

Helpful Hints If there is no record of a bond & allegation locally then you would be wise to search the indexes relating to the dioceses of Canterbury and York which have superior jurisdiction over all other church courts in the southern and northern parts of the country. The marriage indexes are also very useful for determining the distribution of a given surname throughout the county. If you are unable to trace your ancestor’s baptism or marriage a search of this nature enables you to pinpoint likely parishes to search.

The location of probate records post 1858 has already been discussed. Records prior to that date are held, in the majority of cases, by local record offices. Records relating to the Diocese of York 1389 to 1858 are housed at The Borthwick Institute in York, for the diocese of Canterbury 1383 to 1858 at The Family Record Centre. If you cannot trace any probate papers for your ancestor in the local church and or peculiar courts you should search the aforementioned. Printed Indexes to most of the church courts have been published by the British Record Society and can be found in most local reference libraries. The Society of Genealogists in London have copies for most of England & Wales.

Much research is presently being carried by dedicated record searchers to produce Wills Beneficiaries Indexes for the majority of counties in England & Wales. Therefore even if your ancestor did not leave a will there is still a good chance that they may be mentioned in the will of someone else. An excellent example of this is the Index for Essex which is held privately. A List of what is available can be viewed in Marriage, Census and other Indexes for Family Historians by Jeremy Gibson.

Helpful Hints If your ancestor did not leave a will that was proven in the local church court or peculiar, you must still list all entries of the surname. Other members of the family may mention him or her in their wills. Where there are no wills for the surname in the parish you are interested in, note all others for parishes that lie within a short distance of it and obtain copies. Very often you will find they will prove to be relevant. Even if you are successful in your will searches, do not forget to examine the Wills Beneficiaries Index as well.

By now searches in all of the above records will have given you a vast amount of information on your family surname. However, the trick is to make sure that you have put your family’s ancestry together correctly. If you have, then you will feel confident enough to go onto the next stage.

Ideally each piece of information that you collect should contain within it the clues that will take you onto the next generation. This is particularly true of burial entries, to be of any real value they should give an age at death so that you can calculate an approximate date of birth. If there is a matching baptism in the registers all well and good but if not then searches will have to be carried out in surrounding parishes.

Another example is where your ancestor marries in the parish of his bride and then goes back to his own home parish where all of his children are later baptized. In most cases his home parish will be given in the marriage register, thus making your search for his baptism that much easier.

If you have no age at death, then you will have to make an educated guess about how old he was at the time his first child was baptized. The standard practice is to calculate thirty years backwards. If you then find that there are several individuals of that name baptized around that date, you will have to try and eliminate some by determining if they died as infants or died unmarried etc. So you see, it is not always straightforward or easy attempting to trace your ancestry.

	See also: The Origins Network Collections: Marriages: the largest online index to English marriages (1538-1850) Wills and other probate records (1267-1883)