Friday, 22 September 2017

Ancestry updates London church records collection

Ancestry has updated its collection of Church of England record sets for London. I don't usually draw attention to updates, particularly if they don't concern records that originate in Ireland, but I'm making an exception for this collection because it's very large (53million records) and covers a city that many Irish people have made their home down the years.

Being Protestant records, I was surprised to find so many of my Santry family appearing in the collection.

My family, and all the Santry branches I've studied for my One-Name Study, not only comes exclusively from County Cork, its members have been unrelentingly Roman Catholic up to fairly recent times, yet there's a good 170 entries for this rare surname across the collection. The earliest is a marriage from 1757, and it's a new one to me.

I don't know in what way this collection has been updated, but it seems worthwhile mentioning it, if only to encourage family historians with Irish RC ancestors in London not to overlook it in their searches.

These are the individual record sets:

Church of England Deaths and Burials, London, 1813-2003 (2,724,094 entries)

Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, London, 1538-1812 (16,960,587 entries)

Church of England Confirmation Records, London, 1838-1921 (49,139 entries)

Church of England Births and Baptisms, London, 1813-1914 (21,020,251 entries)

Church of England Marriages and Banns, London, 1754-1930 (13,027,528 entries)

The collection is sourced from the London Metropolitan Archives.