4 million new Yorkshire baptism, marriage and burial records dating back to 1538

Today we're delighted to announce that we've published  four million parish records in partnership with the Yorkshire Digitisation Consortium. We've worked with six Yorkshire archives to make these records available online for the very first time. This collection comprises beautiful scanned images of the original handwritten registers from 1538 to 1989, alongside fully searchable transcripts of the original documents.

Explore our Yorkshire parish records now

The first phase of this landmark project, released today, includes nearly a million parish records from North Yorkshire County Record Office, Doncaster Archives and Local Studies, East Riding Archives and Local Studies Service, Teesside Archives and Sheffield Archives and Local Studies, as well as over 3 million parish records and Bishop’s Transcripts from the Borthwick Institute for Archives (University of York), which cover the whole of Yorkshire including West Yorkshire. Further Yorkshire parish records will be released in 2015.

As the provenances of the records are defined by historical, rather than modern boundaries, areas now outside of today’s Yorkshire are also covered, such as County Durham. On completion this will be the most comprehensive online repository of Yorkshire family history records anywhere in the world.

Famous Yorkshiremen found in the records

Covering a wide area and timeframe, many of Yorkshire’s most famous sons and daughters can be found in the records. Poet William Wordsworth married his childhood friend Mary Hutchinsonin the parish of Brompton on 4 October 1802. The marriage register now online at Findmypast shows both their signatures.

Cricketer and founder of Lord’s Cricket Club Thomas Lord’s baptism on 29 December 1755 appears in the baptism register for Thirsk. The baptism of abolitionist William Wilberforce, who was responsible for ending slavery in the British Empire, appears in the register for Holy Trinity Church in Kingston upon Hull on 21 September 1759.

400 years of Yorkshire social history

Findmypast’s Yorkshire Collection also reveals fascinating details of the county’s social history. For example, the burial registers give evidence of the scale of the 1832 cholera epidemic, in which 55,000 people in the UK died, and also details of the deaths of soldiers in the 1645 Civil War.

A mention of the baptism of Thomas Pompey, a youth about 14 years of age and a native of Guinea in Africa, in the Harthill records of 1725 suggests that even back in the 18th century, Yorkshire was the kind of place visitors would want to stay.

Everyday tragedies are captured in the records. For example, over centuries when childbirth was dangerous and miscarriages common, there are instances of children’s first names being recorded as ‘Stillborn’ (Stillborn Sutton and Stillborn Bartendale in the Thorpe Bassett baptisms, for example).

Bizarre deaths and comedy names

These church records also provide some unexpected insights into events in Yorkshire’s colourful history. The parish burial register for Kirby Wiske records that on 7 July 1791, Richard Sturdy, John Cartman and Rich’d Sturdy were “poisoned by neglect of a servant girl in making a pudding”.

The burial register for Birkin records the death of Richard Darley, struck dead by lightning at the age of 25 on 5 June 1836, while the burial register for Thirsk includes Thomas Lee, son of a shoemaker, whose death on 27th May 1789 aged 13 appears alongside the explanation “Died with drinking Gin.”

A quick look through Findmypast’s Yorkshire Collection reveals some extraordinary names. Mary Christmas was buried in Hutton Cranswick in 1689, while Fortune Chimney was laid to rest in Hornsea St Nicholas in 1727. The marriage register of Bramham records the 1837 marriage of Robert Duck to Catherine Peacock.

Chris Webb of the Yorkshire Digitisation Consortium commented on today's announcement: “We are delighted that Findmypast have worked with the Yorkshire Digitisation Consortium in an innovative partnership to make these unique records for a uniquely important (and beautiful) part of the country available in this way. Every release of digital records is an event, but this one, covering about 10% of the English and Welsh historic population, really is important.”

Find your Yorkshire ancestors now