Upwell, Cambridgeshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
Upwell (St. Peter), is a village and a sub-district in Wisbeach district, and a parish that is partly in Downham district, it is in the Isle of Ely and covers part of Cambridgeshire and part Norfolk. The village is 4¾ miles E of Pear-Tree railway station, and 6 miles SE by S of Wisbeach; it has a post-office under Wisbeach. The parish includes Welney chapelry. There are places of worship for Baptists and Primitive and Wesleyan Methodists.

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.


 * Wisbech 1837-1938
 * Downham 1938-1974

Church records
Upwell 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.

Copies of parish registers are also available through the Society of Genealogists and the Cambridge Archives.

Non Conformist Churches

 * Primitive Methodist
 * Wesleyan Methodist
 * Wesleyan Methodist Reform

Census records
Census records from 1841-1891 are available on film through a Family History Center or at the Family History Library. The first film number is 241227. To view these census images online, they are available through a number of websites for a fee or free. ■findmypast (fee-based) but free at Family History Centers and the Family History Library and various other libraries. ■Ancestry.co.uk(fee-based) but free at Family History Centers and the Family History Library and various other libraries. The library versions are known as AncestryInstitution.com. ■The Genealogist.co.uk(fee-based) but free at Family History Centers and the Family History Library and various other libraries. ■FreeCen is a free based UK census searches. It is not complete and individuals are always asked to consider helping out with transcriptions.

http://www.btinternet.com/~e.c.apling/1891Census/Upwell.htm transcript of 1891 census

Poor Law Unions
For more information on the history of the workhouse, see Peter Higginbotham's web site: www.workhouses.org.uk and http://www.workhouses.org.uk/index.html?Wisbech/Wisbech.shtml

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Cambridgeshire 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

http://apling.freeservers.com/Villages/Upwell54.htm Francis White's History, Gazetteer and Directory of Norfolk 1854, pp. 641-3 transcript

Websites
Upwell on GENUKI