York St Michael le Belfrey, Yorkshire Genealogy

Guide to York St Michael le Belfrey, Yorkshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
YORK, a city and county of itself, having exclusive jurisdiction, and the head of a union, locally in the E. riding of York, of which it is the capital, 193 miles (N. N. W.) from London; containing 28,842 inhabitants. This link provides a listing of Parishes in the city.

York St Michael le Belfry is an Ancient Parish which included Clifton, Clifton near York, Rawcliffe, York St Wilfrid, Wilfred, York St Wilfred, and Rawcliffe near York.

For a history of Clifton see Clifton Wikipedia; for history of the village and civil parish of Rawcliffe see Rawcliffe York Wikipedia.

See Medieval Parish Churches of York Wikipedia for context of this parish in the City To find the names of the neighboring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Care should be taken to avoid confusion with other places in the county with the name Clifton. The post 1894 Clifton Within and Clifton Without are explained in the civil registration paragraph below.

Civil Registration
The Anglican parish included Clifton. From 1837-1894 the York registration district included Clifton which was then abolished in 1894 and divided into the separate civil parishes parishes of Clifton Within and Clifton Without

Records from York Registration District held at York are included in the online index available at Yorkshire BMD for post 1837 events; view the coverage table to check progress on the availability of index search.

Marriages include


 * Church of England marriages.
 * Civil Marriages at register offices, or non-conformist churches where a registrar was required to be present at the ceremony.
 * Authorised Person marriages. These cover the non-conformist places of worship which applied to keep their own registers as a result of the Marriage Act, 1898 (bringing them into line with Jewish and Quaker marriages which had this status since 1837). In such cases an 'Authorised Person' (usually the minister or priest) recorded the ceremony instead of the registrar. Earlier weddings in these places would be included with civil marriage registers.

A secondary index of Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these

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

Link to the FS Library film numbers in their collection

Non-Conformists (All other Religions)

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at Findmypast ($), index and images (coverage may vary)

Census Records
See Yorkshire Census

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