Stoak or Stoke, Cheshire Genealogy

Guide to Stoak or Stoke, Cheshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
STOAK, is a parish, in the union of Great Boughton, Higher division of the hundred of Wirral, South division of the county of Chester; containing, with the township of Little Stanney, and part of Whitby. The parish comprises exclusively of Whitby.

Stoak St Lawrence is an Ancient parish in Cheshire and includes Little Stanney.

A Saxon chapel was originally on the site. It was not mentioned in the Domesday Book but fragments of architecture still present in the 19th century showed that a new church must have been built soon after the Norman conquest.

The name may also be spelled Stoke which is the name of the civil parish; the ecclesiastical parish was Stoak.

Stoak is a small village in the civil parish of Stoke, the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester, and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England.

Church records
Stoak or Stoke St Laurence parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials have been indexed by the following groups:

To find the names of the neighbouring 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.

Parish registers for Stoke, 1573-1964

Cheshire Record Office reference: P31/1/1-4, P31/2/1-2, P31/3059/1/1-2, P31/3059/2-4, P31/5

Bishop's transcripts for Stoke, 1607-1848

Records are not in strict chronological order. Some years are missing.

Non-Conformist Churches

 * 1671-1900 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from 1 July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. Here are two excellent Internet sites with birth, marriage and death indexes available:


 * FreeBMD
 * Cheshire BMD

Registration Districts

 * Great Boughton (1837–69)
 * Chester (1870–1937)
 * West Cheshire (1937–74)
 * Chester and Ellesmere Port (1974–98)
 * Cheshire West (post 1998)

Poor Law Unions

 * Tarvin (previously Great Boughton) Poor Law Union, Cheshire
 * Chester Poor Law Union from 1871-1930

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

See also England Cheshire Probate Records - FamilySearch Historical Records

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
Stoke (near Chester) on GENUKI

Stoke (near Nantwich) on GENUKI