Rainham, Kent Genealogy

Guide to Rainham, Kent ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
Rainham is a town in the Medway conurbation ( often referred to as the Medway Towns), see Rainham Kent Wikipedia

Historically, Rainham was a separate village until, in 1928, it was added to the Municipal Borough of Gillingham, which had itself been created in 1903. It became part of the Medway authority when Gillingham was incorporated with the other towns to form Medway Unitary Authority in 1998.

Rainham St Margaret is an Ancient Parish in the Diocese of Rochester and neighbours Gillingham St Mary the Virgin, Kent to the west and Upchurch, Kent in the Diocese of Canterbury to the east; a map of the parish boundary may be found at A church near you

The Parish church of St Margaret, High Street, Rainham has been designated as a grade I listed building British listed building

See Edward Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 6 (1798), pp. 4-15. Date accessed: 19 September 2013. at British History Online and Kent Churches website

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church Records
Rainham parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

To find the names of the neighboring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Kent Online Parish Clerks has indexes available for select parishes. Records are also available at the Kent Archives.

Land Tax
Images for Rainham available at FamilySearch Records see England, Kent, Land Tax Assessments - FamilySearch Historical Records 1780-1832

Census records
Census returns for Rainham 1841-1891

FamilySearch Records includes collections of census indexes which can be searched online for free. In addition FamilySearch Centres offer free access to images of the England and Wales Census through FHC Portal Computers here have access to the Family History Centre Portal page which gives free access to premium family history software and websites that generally charge for subscriptions. Category:England Family History Centres to locate local Family History Centres in UK Introduction to Family History Centers to locate outside UK. Many archives and local history collections in public libraries in England and Wales offer online census searches and also hold microfilm or fiche census returns.

Images of the census for 1841-1891 can be viewed in census collections at Ancestry (fee payable) or Find My Past (fee payable)

The 1851 census of England and Wales attempted to identify religious places of worship in addition to the household survey census returns.

Ancestry UK Census Collection

Find my Past census search 1841-1901

Poor Law Unions
Milton Poor Law Union,Kent

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Kent Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
RAINHAM (St. Margaret), a parish, in the union and hundred of Milton, Upper division of the lathe of Scray, E. division of Kent, 5½ miles (W. by N.) from Sittingbourne.

Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain