Watford, Hertfordshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
Watford, is a town, a parish, and a district, in Hertfordshire. The town stands on Watling-street, the river Colne, the Northwestern railway and at the juntion of the branches to Rickmansworth and St. Albans. There are four dissenting churches, a cemetery and 2 chapels. The parish includes Oxhey, Cashio, and Leavesden hamlets. In 1851 there were places of worship for the Church of England, Independents, Baptists, Wesleyans, the Catholic and Apostolic church, and Latter Day Saints.

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
Watford 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.

Records are also available at the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies.

Pedigrees
The Clement and Clement John Heaton family of Watford is listed in Family History The Journal of The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies July 1979 Vol 10 No. 69/70 New Series No. 45/46 pgs 236-242, 247.

Probate records

Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Hertfordshire 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
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Websites
Watford on GENUKI