Baptismal, Marriage and Burial Records England Earlier than 1685
What documents and where are they for the main family events in England earlier than 1685.
I have hit a wall there, specially since the pertinent documents do not include clues or references to relatives. Thus, cannot confirm relationships.
Would appreciate suggestions to surmount this obstacle. Thank you very much.
Answers
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I'm afraid you need to be far more specific than "England". The amount of surviving records (say pre-1685) varies a great deal according to county, or even down to parish level.
Most county record offices have their own website, which provide email and phone numbers, so you can contact them with a query if you cannot find the records you need to refer to after searching their catalogues.
As you may already know, parish registers can go back as far as the 1530s, but many registers have been lost or destroyed over the years, meaning you will be most fortunate to trace a direct ancestral line back to that period.
Some records are held nationally at The National Archives - a visit to https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ will help to find out about these. But, mostly, your ancestors' records (including wills) are likely to be held at one of the many record offices situated around England.
Please come back with more specific detail regarding the geographical areas in which you are interested. Overall, there is a wealth of information / documents that can take you back at least until the fifteenth century - the main problem being whether you can read / understand the difficult script used at that period. Documents I have come across do appear to be largely written in English, although there are certain types of records that do tend to be in Latin.
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Thank you Paul very much for your reply.
I thought I would cast a wide net before delving in specifics, Since, as you say, a lot of information is spread around, let me start by stating that the most relevant data I have obtained so far for my purposes has been from the Bishop's Transcripts from Swinford churches. Includes All Saints and Saint Sepulchre. Indeed, the written records before 1685 thereabouts are difficult to read, but not impossible. In addition, they are scant in detailing any relationships and clues to verify if they belong in the proper tree.
I recognize that I will have to learn much better what the churches and depositories around Swinford are and see, as you suggest, if they have viewable records. For now, I will explore the national archives you mention.
Thank you again.
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Assuming you are referring to the Swinford in Leicestershire, I just checked the Find My Past website and see they appear to have transcriptions / images for the parish prior to 1685, but I can only view the website index as I do not have a subscription that would allow me to examine the Find My Past records in detail. Perhaps they just relate to the Bishop's Transcripts, of which you are already aware.
The other main source for records on the internet would be ancestry.com, although I haven't checked what they have for viewing regarding Swinford.
As I suggested earlier, getting in touch with the county record office can be helpful - or even looking at their catalogue for relevant material. In the case of Leicestershire the web address is https://www.recordoffice.org.uk/. After getting to that page there should be various links to their catalogue, contact details, etc.
I wish you well in your searches, but you have to realise that the further you get back (when searching parish registers) the less detail is likely to be included. So, for some registers I have viewed when looking for my ancestors, there is just the father's name in a baptism entry. I have even, in one register, found marriages where only the groom's name is listed, or burials in the name of "the wife of John Smith"!
Eventually, we all hit a brick wall at some stage in our searches of the various branches of our family trees: in a couple of cases, I cannot find anything to link to my lines beyond around 1810, whereas I have been fortunate in tracing one branch to the 1400s, through most of them having left very legible wills.
Finally, you might have already tried FamilySearch's own database, but I just did a quick search on "Smith" instances at Swinford in their indexed records (1550-1700 period). Just an example of what you might find regarding your own family, but see https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&q.anyDate.from=1550&q.anyDate.to=1700&q.anyPlace=Swinford%2C%20Leicestershire%2C%20England%2C%20United%20Kingdom&q.anyPlace.exact=on&q.surname=smith&q.surname.exact=on for the results my search produced. (Not all actually for Swinford, however, in spite of my stipulating an "Exact" search on just that place!)
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Thank you Paul.
I have navigated several documents in Family Search which have plugged some holes. But so far they all hit the 1684 wall.
Therefore, per your suggestion, I have contacted directly the Genealogy section of Swinford All Saints Church in England. They have acknowledged the inquiry and referred it to the appropriate contact. Hope this works.
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