How do I go beyond 1837?
We’ve all been there - racing through our family history, using the census returns and certificates to get us well into the 19th century, and then...nothing? No census. No certificates.
Those civil registration certificates of birth, marriage and death stop in 1837 and the 1841 census is the last one to record all names (but not the earliest census - see more below). So where do we go now?
I have good news and bad news. The good news? Britain is one of THE best historically documented countries in the world - churches, courts, landowners, guilds, government and others all produced name-rich records. The bad news? No one record covers everyone the way the census does. And each type of record needs a little know-how - where to find it, what it covers, how to read it and what it can tell you.
So let’s get started…
Registers and records
Parish registers are the most well-known source for this period. In 1538, Thomas Cromwell - Henry VIII’s chief minister and star of Wolf Hall - ordered each parish to keep a record of baptisms, marriages, and burials. Few registers survive from this period, although many do go back a few hundred years, and have been deposited in county archives. Check the archive website or catalogue for local coverage and digitisation. (Nonconformists - those who didn't worship in the Church of England - might be missing. See The National Archives guide for more information.)
Early register entries are often just name and date, so not enough to distinguish one person from another baptised a few years later, or one baptised in a neighbouring parish. So the registers are best combined with other records. Say you read “my son William and his wife Elizabeth” in a will. You now have the family relationships (testator, his son and daughter-in-law), and can now search the parish register for the dates of William’s possible baptism and marriage.
It's not just the register. The parish was responsible for many other aspects of local life, so you might find your ancestor recorded in parish records as a churchwarden, a rate (tax) payer, a recipient of poor relief or a tradesman. Survival of these records varies, and most of it isn’t online. Again, check your local archive catalogue to see what they hold.
Census substitutes
The decennial census started in 1801 just as headcounts, although local
enumerators often made lists of householders to help them count. In a few parishes, these lists have survived and can be found in county archives. Some lists have also been transcribed on the commercial sites and the Early British Census project.
Also try the following two census substitutes:
Land tax assessments were made annually, so you can follow the property owners and occupiers from year to year. Check your local archive catalogue; some are also on Ancestry. In 1798 owners were allowed to buy themselves out of the tax, so a national list was drawn up, digitised on Ancestry.
Militia ballot lists: Each parish had to record an annual list of men of fighting age. A ballot then chose those "lucky" few to serve in the county militia. Survival varies hugely but it is worth checking for your region. (The booklet Militia Lists and Musters, 1757–1876 by Jeremy Gibson & Mervyn Medlycott also tells you what survives where.)
Archive guides
Consider who your ancestor was: Catholic or nonconformist? Apprentice, soldier, sailor? Landowner or pauper? Each of these different identities left different records, and research guides tell you where to find the records. The National Archives has produced over 300 guides for all these identities, and more. Each guide describes how to find surviving records for that subject. Most archives and some museums also produce their own guides for their region or specialism.
Wills
Wills were proved in a bewildering hierarchy of church courts, all linked to where the deceased owned property (not necessarily where they lived). There is no central collection or index, and not all are digitised.
When researching wills, start at the top - in this case, the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC), the highest probate court in the country. Effectively, it handled wills of people who owned property in more than one diocese, or who died abroad. It’s always a good idea to check for PCC wills first, for two reasons. One, the collection is digitised and easy to search at The National Archives or Ancestry. Two, more and more people started using it: Nonconformists used it to avoid the local church courts, wealthy individuals for the prestige and legal authority, and, from about the 1810s, anyone holding stocks and shares (the Bank of England would only accept PCC wills).
For people holding property in the north of England, check the Prerogative Court of York (PCY), also digitised on Ancestry. Finally, we get to the lower, regional courts. Digitisation here is mixed. Ancestry has good collections for Wiltshire and Yorkshire. Welsh wills are digitised and online at the National Library of Wales. But for some regions, you will need to check the local archives.
And then there’s Devon. In 1942, the Exeter Probate Registry was destroyed in a bombing raid. About 200,000 probate documents, covering Devon and parts of Somerset and Cornwall, went up in flames. All is not quite lost - check the Devon Wills Project, which has tracked down any surviving copies, transcripts or abstracts of the lost wills. (And remember your Devon ancestor may have made a PCC will rather than using the local courts. PCC wills are held safely in The National Archives.)
Courts and newspapers
Our ancestors ended up in court for all sorts of reasons - not just crime - and there seemed to be a court for everything: debts, disputed wills, illegitimacy. Court records are therefore rich in names, but most aren’t online or searchable, and are often hard going. Start with other records, and then if you suspect your ancestor might appear in court records, check for the relevant National Archives guide. (The notable exception to this rule is the Old Bailey Online, which has almost 200,000 trials at London’s central criminal court, plus the Ordinary’s Accounts - the lives, confessions and last words of executed convicts!)
Newspapers often reported court cases, and they're also worth searching for marriage and death notices, bankruptcies, inquests, auctions, adverts, and anything else the newspaper found noteworthy. Search the British Newspaper Archive or Findmypast.
As you can see, researching before 1837 takes a bit more time and detective work. Remember - no one record answers everything, you need to piece several records together. I hope you enjoy the challenge.
Glossary
Churchwarden: an unpaid parish officer responsible for looking after the church.
Diocese: an area under a bishop, centred on a cathedral and made up of many parishes e.g. Exeter, Salisbury, Norwich or York
Nonconformist: someone, usually a Protestant, who worshipped outside the Church of England, e.g. a Baptist, Methodist or Quaker.
Probate: the legal process of proving a will is valid.