Over a million Westminster baptism, marriage and burial records dating back to 1538 are now available online.
The family history website Find My Past UK has today published online for the very first time parish records held by the City of Westminster Archives Centre. The Westminster Collection comprises fully searchable transcripts and scanned images of the parish registers.
The 1,365,731 records launched today cover the period 1538-1945 and come from over 50 Westminster churches including St Anne, Soho, St Clement Danes, St George Hanover Square, St James Westminster, St Margaret Westminster, St Martin-in-the-Fields, St Mary-le-Strand, St Paul Covent Garden.
Today’s launch marks the start of a painstaking project to preserve digitally the City of Westminster Archives Centre’s collection, and sees the first tranche of its baptisms, marriages and burials go online. The remaining records are set to go live over the coming months, along with cemetery registers, wills, rate books, settlement examinations, workhouse admission and discharge books, bastardy, orphan and apprentice records, charity documents, and militia and watch records.
The new Westminster Collection joins a growing resource of official parish records from local archives, including Cheshire Archives & Local Studies, Manchester City Council and Plymouth and West Devon Records Office, with many more in the pipeline and due to go live in the coming months. In addition over 40 million parish records from family history societies can be found at Find My Past UK in partnership with the Federation of Family History Societies.
Find My Past has added more Westminster parish records, so that there are now three million online.
Find My Past says: “This marks the first phase in [our] project with City of Westminster Archives. In the coming months, the following records will be published online too:
- Non-conformist registers 1694-1945;
- Cemetery registers 1855-1990;
- Parish rate books 1561-1900;
- Settlement examination books 1701-1840;
- Removal registers 1710-1867;
- Poor relief lists 1715-1869;
- Workhouse admission and discharge books 1725-1869;
- Apprenticeship registers 1640-1869;
- Bastardy records 1657-1825;
- Militia records 1780-1816;
- Watch, constables’ and beadles’ records 1736-1830;
- Wills and probate records 1504-1829.
Alan Stewart