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Colin Blanshard Withers'
Yorkshire Parish Registers

INTRODUCTION:
The Yorkshire Parish Registers

Source=h:/!Genuki/RecordTranscriptions/YKS/YPR.txt Anyone who has a copy of Colin Blanshard Withers' book "Yorkshire Parish Registers" can imagine how delighted I was when Colin offered me the data from the book for the Genuki pages. This makes an extremely valuable addition to the data on the Genuki Yorkshire web-site and will also (with your help) allow me to keep the information up to date.

Very fortunately for me, Colin set his book out in the pre-1832 parishes. This exactly the way the Genuki Yorkshire pages are set up and so it allows me to add a page (or more than one page in a lot of cases) to each of the parishes in order to include all the YPR parish information.

You will find below all of the non-parish information, almost verbatim, from Colin's book. I would recommend that you read at least his "Foreword" and "Introduction pages", and at a later point, you will no doubt need to access the "Abbreviations" page. There is of course no list of the Parishes/Chapelries covered, but you will find a list of the information from this book for each parish listed under "Church Records" on the relevant Genuki Yorkshire Parish page (take the link at the top of this page to "Yorkshire", then take the link to "Towns and Parishes".

If you find that any of the data is incorrect, please drop me (Colin Hinson, not Colin Blanshard Withers) a line via the link at the bottom of this page.

Colin Hinson, September 2003.

FOREWORD

It was while I was getting ready to turn my attention to yet more Yorkshire parishes in my endless search for the missing link in my family tree, that I noticed that my desk was under a small mountain of books, booklets, guides and leaflets with which I intended to do battle. Having gone through this exercise on more than one occasion before (but not all at once, I hasten to add), I decided that the time was right to put a stop to this mayhem each time I wished to investigate Yorkshire parish registers. "Why doesn't someone, anyone, publish an easy-to-use guide to all the Yorkshire parishes, with lists of deposited registers, and all available bishop's transcripts, IGI coverage, (and noting all the gaps in these series, rather than just the outside dates), and listing all published and unpublished transcripts and indexes?" Invariably, when someone asks a question such as this, the reply comes back, "why don't you?" I was no exception. After bouncing this complaint/suggestion off my best (genealogical) pal, and getting the stock answer, I was left wondering why I always allow myself to get drawn into such things.

The first step was to create a complete list of source material. To get a complete list, or as complete as any list of sources can be in this rapidly changing world of genealogy, I would have to visit all the various Yorkshire County Record Offices to note their current holdings of Parish Registers and Bishop's Transcripts, and to check the latest additions to their growing lists of transcripts and indexes, both published and unpublished. I would also have to check the Record Offices of Durham, Nottingham, Cumbria, Cheshire and Lancashire to get details of Yorkshire parishes and detached areas that lay under their respective jurisdictions. The parish register card index at the Society of Genealogists would need to be checked for their extensive holdings of published and unpublished transcripts. Permission would need to be sought from the Genealogical Society of Utah to use their Parish and Vital Records List to show the IGI coverage for each Yorkshire parish, and finally, contact with the many local Family History Societies would be necessary to get up-to-date lists of their transcriptions of parish registers. Several months later my small mountain had turned into quite a large mountain! (See the Bibliography).

The final step was to condense this mountain into a single readable volume, for Church of England parishes. The text has been checked and re-checked, and proof-read several times. However, I take full responsibility for any remaining errors or omissions, and I beg forgiveness if any occur. I would be most grateful for any notification of errors, and particularly for any changes in the data which the reader may come to be aware of.

I hope this volume proves to be as useful as it is meant to be, and at the very least should help to cut down on valuable shelf space.

Colin B. Withers

The above copyright data was taken from the book
Yorkshire Parish Registers
and was presented to Genuki by the author:
Colin Blanshard Withers.
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