Thornhill, Yorkshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
THORNHILL (St. Michael), a parish, in the union of Dewsbury, Lower division of the wapentake of Agbrigg, W. riding of York; containing, with the chapelry of Flockton, and the townships of Shitlington and Lower Whitley, 7201 inhabitants, of whom 2816 are in Thornhill township, 3 miles (S. by E.) from Dewsbury.

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.

Online Records
Online data content from chapelry registers of Thornton exists at some of the following websites and for the specified ranges of years:

Thornhill is an 'ancient' parish (created before 1813) in the diocese of Wakefield. Church of England records for Thornhill St. Michael's survive from 1580. Other pre-1837 Church of England (Anglican) churches in Thornhill parish include:


 * St. James the Greater, Flockton (with records from 1813)

The original registers are deposited at the West Yorkshire Archives in Wakefield. Microfilm/fiche copies are available at archive branches such as Leeds at Sheepscar and Kirklees in Huddersfield.

The copies made by the minister (ordered by an Act of 1598) and sent each year to the Bishop of the diocese (known as parish register transcripts or Bishop's transcripts) survive from 1600 and are deposited at the West Yorkshire Archives branch in Sheepscar, Leeds.

The Family History Library in Salt Lake City has both parish registers and bishop's transcripts on microfilm for Thornhill and its chapelry, which are listed in the. Many of these records are indexed in the International Genealogical Index available online through the 'Advanced Search' at www.familysearch.org.

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